Hire a psychiatrist?

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/more_sport/cycling/article52133

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Summer seems a long time ago, yet the Beijing memories have hardly

dimmed. Sailors, swimmers, cyclists . . . especially the cyclists.

Even when you say it now, there is a vague sense of unreality: 14

medals, eight received on the highest step. How un-British was that

performance? What was clear in the months before the Olympics was the

thoroughness of the cyclists' preparation. Under an intelligent

coaching team, the training was first class. In a sport where such

things matter, the equipment was state of the art. And the man who

masterminded the programme, performance director Dave Brailsford,

said the best thing he did was hire a psychiatrist.

Not a psychologist. Psychologists have been around sport since Bill

Shankly was convincing good footballers that they were great. But

psychiatrists? Dr Steve s, the man chosen by Brailsford for a

central role with the cycling team, believes he may be the only

psychiatrist working with elite sportsmen in Britain.

You may wonder whether the average sportsman would notice the

difference between the psychiatrist and psychologist. There is a

difference. A psychologist, s once said, can show you how to

drive the car. The psychiatrist will lift the bonnet, show you how

the engine works, then teach you to drive. When there's a breakdown,

the psychiatrist's pupil may be in the better position.

You think it's the usual mind game, played by cleverer men. Then you

go to 's book about Hoy and the GB cycling team,

Heroes, Villains & Velodromes. There is a chapter on s. You read

Bradley Wiggins's autobiography and there's another chapter on

s. Hoy and Wiggins won five gold medals in Beijing. They may

know something we don't. Pendleton says that without

s's help she would not have become a world champion and an

Olympic gold medallist. The shrink has some important people on his

side.

WE MEET at his home in south Lancashire. Within 10 minutes s's

discomfort is apparent. He wants to speak about his work, not about

himself. " I don't want people to know every detail about my life, " he

says. " I'm not a pop star. To be effective, a psychiatrist has to be

as invisible as possible. I need to remain neutral, so the people I

work with don't come to me with any preconceived ideas. This is why

Freud would sit behind the patient so he could not be seen. "

s was born in Middlesbrough, into a family background where it

wasn't expected that you would go to university. He earned a place at

a local grammar school, excelled at maths and the sciences and was

the first pupil in the school to take four A-levels. He read maths at

Stirling University and taught for eight years, before returning to

university and graduating in medicine from St 's in London. He

spent 12 years working with people with serious personality disorders

at Rampton high- security hospital and became undergraduate dean of

the medical school at Sheffield University. Seven years ago he began

working with British cyclists. His arrival coincided with Britain's

first steps towards world domination in track cycling.

s bristles at the notion that his role has been

exceptional. " People say to me, `What do you think happened in

cycling?' The sport has got the best performance director of any

sport, you've got world-class coaches, you've got world-class

athletes and I was just one cog, helping the wheel to turn. My area

of expertise is in the field of psyche, and I should be good at it, I

have been doing it long enough. When I was a surgeon, if you operated

on someone, they didn't come back to you after the operation, shake

your hand and say, `I can't believe I'm alive, you managed it'. They

expected to come out of it. It should be the same now. I should know

what I'm doing. "

A man knows his job and does it: the mechanic taping the handlebars,

the nutritionist deciding what to eat on the morning of the race;

s is the brain electrician who can fix the wiring inside your

head.

The sense of ordinariness disappears once you ask him to take you

through his modest, belated athletic career. He ran from 13 to 15 but

it wasn't like he was the next Black. He stopped after two

years and didn't return for 10 years. Even then, it was twice-weekly

training sessions and low-key competition at the weekend. It was fun,

nothing more.

At 40, s thought to hang up his spikes. Someone told him about

the masters circuit. " I changed my mind about retiring and for the

first time in my life decided to take athletics seriously. I started

weights, I went to the gym, which I had never done, I did speed

endurance sessions. It was bizarre: my times just kept dropping until

I was 44 and hit 10.9s for the 100m. From nowhere, I was third in the

East of England rankings and someone wrote about an up-and-coming

athlete, young s. I got a letter inviting me to join

this Olympic training camp. I wrote back and said, `Actually, I'm an

old man, I'm not up- and-coming at all, I'm 44'. But I was loving it,

really enjoying seeing my times drop. "

At the age of 46 he ran 22.21s for the 200m; he became masters 200m

world champion at 50, running 22.5s. " At the time I was beginning my

work with elite athletes and I would look at myself, thinking, `You

can't go out there in a world of elite sport with this random

approach to your own training'. I structured my training, I worked on

my mental skills and realised I had exactly the same concerns as the

athletes I was working with — anxieties, feeling pressure,

insecurities, that feeling of things getting out of control. "

s learnt to train his mind, which was the right starting point

for the exercise that would dominate the rest of his life. He

returned to the track last week, early preparation for his 2009

season, and ran 11.7s for 100m. As his fitness improves, he hopes to

get that time down to 11.4s or 11.3s. He is 55 years of age.

CYCLING'S team doctor, Palfreman, first asked him to work with

the GB squad seven years ago. In 2004 Brailsford asked him to visit

Pendleton. " This girl has massive potential, " said Brailsford, " but

she's not producing. We've had different psychologists work with her

but we can't seem to get anywhere. "

s flew to Switzerland, where Pendleton was based. " My first

impression was that you had this really astute, really good woman who

was completely taken over by her chimp. Let me explain: there are two

aspects of your brain that work independently of each other. One is

quite emotional and irrational; the other is logical, capable of

making good judgments. I call the emotional part `the chimp'. He was

controlling Vicky.

" But we have a choice here, logic or emotion, it's up to us. Because

Vicky was so ready to change and so capable of understanding what she

had to do, I was very excited. `I can fix this', I thought. Dave was

delighted: `Can you have her ready for the Athens Olympics?' which

were eight weeks away. `No', I said, `it will take much longer — 12

months would be my guess'. "

Pendleton had a disastrous Athens. " Down on the track after her race,

she was distraught. `I don't want to get on the bike again, I will

never be a cyclist, I'm finished', she said. I could see this amazing

person, but all I could hear was this chimp. I had to shut the chimp

up and talk to the young woman. `Go back to Manchester, take time out

and then come to see me'. It was the woman who replied, `I'll come

and see you'. She has proved herself a phenomenal pupil. A year

later, she became world champion and is now Olympic champion. "

Within the team, s's work is widely admired. " Hoy said

publicly that I had helped him a lot and helped to get his mindset

right. He's a leader, so everyone followed. One of the cyclists

said, `If you don't see Steve, there's something wrong with you', and

the whole basis of seeing a psychiatrist was reversed. "

But Hoy: surely there wasn't much need to tamper with the mechanics

of his mind? " You can be very motivated but actually lack confidence.

So you can't say someone is mentally there, because the package isn't

right. With there were one or two chinks but we addressed

those. But in a general sense you are right, is very strong and

very driven. "

Given s' training and passion for helping people, you suggest

that his expertise and energy could be better used to help those who

are mentally unwell. " That's true, " he agrees. How does he justify

it? " I was 52 when I went full-time into sport. I had done 20 years

within the system and have fond memories of patients who recovered

and got back their lives. I have often thought athletes are no

different to other people with, say, depression. They're in a world

where there is a public expectation on them to deliver for us,

something that makes our lives more colourful, and while I understand

you saying I could be running clinics in depression, it is no good

getting one of my depressed patients better if they don't have

anything to return to. Sport plays a big part in people's lives. "

Does he believe he changes people, makes them better? " It's the wrong

question. Let me make this simple. Imagine that inside your head

there are 100 light bulbs — 30 red and 70 blue. The red don't help

you at all, the blue bring out the best in you. When you come to me,

the reds are on, the blues are turned off. I help you to switch off

the reds, switch on the blues, show you how you can do that, and then

you've got to keep them that way.

" People will say you have changed, but you haven't, you've just

learnt some good mental skills. Vicky Pendleton can flick off her

anxiety lights when they light up and switch on the lights that tell

her she is a confident young woman. "

He tells, finally, of a favourite moment. " I've worked with the

cyclist Staff for three years. He is a winner, a guy who

rigorously monitored every aspect of his performance before Beijing.

To watch him in the velodrome on his gold medal evening was a

delight. Everything about him said he was in total control, an

athlete there to do business. He led the sprint relay team off, broke

the world record for that first lap and when it was all over, he

walked back to the pits and sat down, almost robotic but totally

comfortable in himself. `Are you okay?' I asked. He just said, `I've

never felt this calm in my life'. Minutes after winning a gold medal,

he said that. "

Putting the s principle into practice

VICTORIA PENDLETON A gold medal winner this summer, the cyclist,

inset, attributed much of her success to s: `I wouldn't be here

now if it wasn't for Steve. After Athens I got a lot of criticism

about being too weak. Steve could see I was deeply unhappy with my

performance, because I was not doing it for the right reasons. He

taught me to care less about other people and more about myself, to

be more assertive. The concepts Steve taught would help four out of

five girls in everyday life. If I had known these at 14, I would have

been much more happy and less full of teen angst'

SARAH STEVENSON The tae kwon do athlete, who won bronze in Beijing,

was another to benefit from working with s: `Before I saw him, I

would think, " What am I doing here? Why am I doing this? " I would

look at other people and think they were better. He gets you to think

that you want to be there, you want to fight. He gets you focused on

what you are going to do and that makes you enjoy it rather than

worrying about why you are there. I wish I'd met him 10 years ago'

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Carruthers

Wakefield, UK