GB rower Beccy Muzerie discusses the fear of failure on her journey to creating an Olympic dream
I want to win a medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
That statement probably doesn’t come as much of a surprise considering I am writing this blog as part of the GB Rowing Team, but the reality is that, that sentence is hard to write. It is a bold statement; a big dream. It leaves space for this thing that we are often so afraid of – failure.
I was not a child that dreamt of competing at the Olympics. Sure, we watched the Olympics as a family and joked about what sport we would do (rowing was never my answer), but it was never a serious conversation.
When I later went to university, I wanted a new challenge, so I signed up to row and a friend took me on my first outing to a gym. I was surprised to learn that the experience took longer than 20 minutes, and shocked to discover that whilst my right arm understood the concept of bench press, my left failed to move from my side. Sporting success didn’t come naturally to me.
“I was in awe that an Olympic gold medallist thought my session was worthy of encouragement”
Five years later, I found myself up a snowy Spanish mountain on a GB development camp. Until that moment, I’d always trained alongside studying or work, and I discovered that I rather liked the life of ‘eat, sleep, row, repeat’ – even when rowing consisted only of indoor rowing in an oversized sports hall. Meanwhile, preparations for the Rio 2016 Olympics were firmly underway far out of my sights, and when my roommate asked me if I would I race in Rio, given the opportunity, I answered without hesitation, of course not. I was nowhere near good enough and it would be a total embarrassment.
The following September, after watching the medals pour in at the 2016 Olympics, I walked into the national training centre in Caversham to begin training with the team.
Secretly, I didn’t have the self-belief to think I deserved to be there. A few days in, I found myself training alone in the gym with Katherine Copeland, an incredible athlete who I had watched win gold in London 2012. She started cheering me on, and I was in awe that an Olympic gold medallist thought my session was worthy of encouragement.
As the months progressed, I began to realise that the Olympians who I was training alongside were human. They had as many highs and lows, struggles and challenges as anyone else.
“If we don’t dream big and aim high, we are never going to get anywhere”
And, as time moved on, and my performances were in the mix with everyone else, the realisation that I might be good enough to be on the team slowly sank in. It wasn’t a straightforward journey. I learned the hard way that I can be my own barrier to success, by putting limits on what I think I can achieve and fearing the consequences of trying and failing at something.
Except, when I stop and reflect, I don’t think having a dream or taking a risk, and not seeing the result you want, is a failure. If everyone achieved their dreams, we wouldn’t work so hard to get there and celebrate when people do make it.
The very fact that despite our hardest efforts we don’t always get the result we want, demonstrates that we are affected by so many factors outside of the things that we can control. The very possibility of ‘failure’ makes it a dream rather than a process. If we don’t dream big and aim high, we are never going to get anywhere. But, if we don’t appreciate that the journey is part of the challenge and acknowledge that not achieving our dreams does not change who we fundamentally are, then we will be too afraid to try in the first place.
I know that some people find dreaming big and taking risks easier than others. I am not one of those people. I can only see one stage of the journey at a time and find it hard to imagine a different reality to my current one. Dreaming is a challenge for me. In fact, this blog post is a follow-up to my personal blog post published in March 2020 where the opening line reads: ‘I want to go to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics’.
However, in the last four months, the dream has grown. Having briefly tasted that selection could be a possibility, I don’t want to put a limit on what could be achieved. I am risking more, aiming higher and dreaming bigger.
I want to win a medal at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
