Tuesday 10 June 2008

Great news!

Last night Sonnie Trotter managed to climb Rhapsody at Dumbarton Rock. If you have been following his trip in Scotland you’ll see that the route held out Sonnie’s siege through 23 falls, 2 changed flights and many weeks of effort. But I knew as long as he was still here trying it, it would go down.

This is the difference between good athletes and world class athletes. Good athletes have talent, maybe training too and do impressive things. But when it comes to the big one – whatever it may be, they either quietly fold in the face of the obstacles, or keep on going right through them.

It’s obvious if you read Sonnie’s blog that he could go anywhere and repeat this performance on some other totally different hard route. It’s nothing to do with whether he did enough campusing, or whether a route suits his build or other such details. It’s because he was inspired to give himself a good challenge and because he can make himself fight harder than an armoured tank.

Not many people can do that. Good effort!

5 comments:

  1. It was yesterday afternoon actually :)

    Fantastic effort, and a fight at the top.

    db.

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  2. and 'Committed' he most certainly was.. :)

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  3. Anonymous11 June, 2008

    Excellent effort from Sonny,8c/+ with big falls takes some doing. Just to confirm Britain has no world class climbing athletes apart from McClure and maybe Rich Simpson when he's climbing. They are the Olympians, the rest are club runners who mask the fact by different means.

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  4. Dave, I really like the blog and admire the thoroughness with which you have written about the sport in terms of your experience and ideas about training.

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  5. Anonymous13 June, 2008

    yeah that's right peter beal.

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