Why a Bolt will always beat the Beast Exceptional talent is rarely enough by itself — hours of practice and hard work is essential, writes Alan Massie

Why a Bolt will always beat the Beast

Exceptional talent is rarely enough by itself — hours of practice and hard work is essential, writes Alan Massie

They call Yohan Blake “the Beast” because of his work ethic. “When my coach gives me a programme I damage it,” he says. Well, on Sunday he couldn’t damage Usain Bolt and claim the title of “the fastest man on the planet.” After the race, Bolt admitted that Blake trains harder than he does, but -- he didn’t need to add -- he doesn’t run as fast. Blake is younger than his fellow Jamaican, and may yet surpass him, but for the moment the difference between them is clear. As Aldous Huxley wrote: “Nature is monstrously unjust. There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all the virtues are of no avail.” Others seem to disagree. The rower Helen Glover, modestly downplaying her achievement in winning an Olympic gold, said that if she could do it, anyone could. She is surely mistaken but nevertheless makes a fair point: that talent or even genius is rarely enough by itself. Thomas Carlyle declared that genius “means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all.” “First of all” may be wrong. A musical friend tells me that Mendelssohn’s Octet is one of the finest piece of chamber music written in the 19th century -- and the boy wonder was only 16 when he wrote it. Mozart was another genius, pouring forth melody as if by the light of nature. Nevertheless, who can doubt that hard work contributed to making the child prodigy able to write Don Giovanni? The argument about the respective importance of talent and industry is a variant of the other argument about nature and nurture, neither capable of being brought to a conclusion. Back in the 1980s cricket-lovers were divided between those who adored David Gower and those who admired Graham Gooch. Gooch scored more runs (except against Australia); Gower batted more beautifully. Gooch was devoted to practice; Gower seemed to disdain it. Probably the contrast was not quite so clear. Gooch clearly had natural talent too, and it may be that Gower worked harder at his game than he seemed to do. Nevertheless Gower, like Ian Botham or Denis Compton before him, appeared to make a mockery of Carlyle’s assertion that “work alone is noble.” Hard work achieves much -- the Helen Glover point. No cricketer demonstrated this more surely than Geoffrey Boycott. His natural talent was modest. Neville Cardus once wrote of him as an “artisan building his brick wall of an innings.” Yet he made himself into a great batsman and his brick wall became as imposing as the Great Wall of China. Even so, Boycott, though not notably modest, has said that he wished he could have batted like Brian Lara. Sport is the field of life where this argument is most visible because we have all seen young men and women of great natural talent who never fulfil their potential. This is often a matter of character – a reluctance to take advice, a refusal to recognise their weaknesses and a disinclination to work hard enough to overcome them. The more sport has become professional, the more evident the need to work to improve. It would be absurd to suppose that any of our Olympic medallists have got where they are by talent alone. Even Usain Bolt probably trains a bit harder than he pretends. This may be true even of horses. Frankel is the Usain Bolt of Racing -- but how much does he owe to his trainer, Sir Henry Cecil? Shakespeare is acknowledged as the greatest of geniuses with his “native woodnotes wild” and all that. Ben Jonson recalled that “the players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare that in his writing, whatsoever he penned, he never blotted out a line,” and added, “My answer hath been, ‘Would he had blotted a thousand!’” Yet one of the many remarkable things about him is his development, both technically and in the treatment of his material. Doubtless this was in part a natural consequence of the changes in sensibility and understanding that come with the passage of time, but it also suggests a writer who worked tirelessly, no matter what his players believed, at the refinement of his art. There is indeed no substitute for talent, but without industry talent will usually wither. One sees this even in a minor art-form such as politics. How many potential prime ministers fall by the wayside, not because they lack talent but because they don’t work hard enough at the game? Back in 1962 when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer at the age of 45, Reggie Maudling was the coming man in the Tory party. But he was lazy and complacent, unlike the youngish MP for Finchley, Margaret Thatcher. Or take the greatest Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, who summed up his career in this little verse: “Few thought he was even a starter,/ There were many who thought themselves smarter;/But he ended PM, CH and OM,/ An Earl and a Knight of the Garter.” The hare was more naturally talented than the tortoise, but the tortoise plodded on and won the race.