Amateurism in our professional skating team

            It is no doubt that our team has been very successful so far this season, and from our relatively low pre season team budget this success came as a surprise to many people. The result is a much higher level of sprint speed skating in Holland than has been seen before. But it is not only Holland that is moving forward, so is the rest of the world and it is the job of a professional skating team to repetitively see the world of speed skating through fresh eyes in order not to get left behind.

            “Breakthrough season” is a term that is heard all over the world in sport, and we as a team have had such a season, now it is important to recognize why so that we may continue to improve for seasons to come. This is only my first year being officially part of the team but I think our breakthrough season has as small part to do with an amateur attitude that resides within. This amateur attitude has given us clear judgment about the right path to take when confronted with decisions.

            When the word amateur is used most people associate that with being unskillful or unfocused, this is not the case. An amateur athlete is defined as one that competes for no monetary gain; this concept was the spirit of the earliest Olympic games in ancient Greece, simply competing for the joy of competing. The ancient Greeks would also only elect amateur politicians with little experience because they believed that becoming a “professional”, being the opposite of an amateur, clouded a person’s view of their sincere best intentions in politics. I believe the same happens in sport.

            When you are at the beginning end of professional sport, you are not yet aware of the standards of professionalism. By these standards I mean; what race times you should be satisfied with, what other skaters you should be faster than or not, how the other professionals conduct themselves, train etc. All this knowledge gives you a way to judge yourself as compared to what is happening around you, and athletes can be mistaken into thinking this needs to happen all the time rather than, every now and then turning to inward and asking themselves where to find the joy and how to move forward.

           
As a team in the pre season, I think, the uncertainty that we had was a blessing. We did not know what we were capable of, so we just did what we thought what was right for each and every one of us rather than comparing to the mass. This individual and amateur approach to training yielded results, and that is because it created and environment where joy for skating and hunger to do better thrived.

            Now I think we need to keep that open mindedness. Even when a skater skates a fast time we need to sincerely ask “can we do better”, rather than just being satisfied. When someone has a new idea that yields results, there should be a chance to embrace it rather than thinking we know better. And when we look at the competition rather than believing we are better than them or faster, we should put past results aside and simply view them as competitors who also share the joy of skating. That is the attitude of the amateur, I think it is extremely valuable and I think team APPM has it in spades (That’s a lot.).

By Daniel Greig