Emma Columnist
Wiggs
Jekyll or Hyde? The mind-set and behaviours that underpin performance
T
HE recent 2019 - and my seventh - Sprint and Paracanoe World Championships were at the spiritual home of canoeing, Szeged in Hungary. The crowds were like nothing I’ve ever seen before at a canoeing event - loud, passionate and quite simply spectacular! Over 30,000 people cheered a record number of paddlers, over 1,000 athletes from over 200 nations, across five explosive days of racing. These World Championships were what we had all been training for, working towards and focused on for the last three years, round one of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Qualification. There are nine events in Paracanoe at next year’s Games, three more than in Rio, and as a squad we targeted one boat spot in each event so #Project9 was on! I’ve previously written about my disrupted year with injury and as we landed in Budapest I had nervous butterflies, my mind flipping from a calm ‘phew! I’m just relieved and happy to be here’ to ‘this is a World Champs, I’ve always been at my competitive best when I line up…what if?’ It was like Jekyll and Hyde. I knew what I should be saying and feeling and I managed it some of the time but then doubt would creep in as I watched new paddlers emerging and well known faces smashing training sessions, looking honed and race ready. Agilitymagazine | 2
