The Greatest: What Sport Teaches Us About Achieving Success

Description

What can Roger Federer teach us about the secret of longevity? What do the All Blacks have in common with improvised jazz musicians? What can cognitive neuroscientists tell us about what happens to the brains of sportspeople when they perform? And why did Johan Cruyff believe that beauty was more important than winning? Matthew Syed, the 'Sports Journalist of the Year 2016', answers these questions and more in a fascinating, wide-ranging and provocative book about the mental game of sport. How do we become the best that we can be, as individuals, teams and as organisations? Sport, with its innate sense of drama, its competitive edge, its psychological pressures, its sense of morality and its illusive quest for perfection, provides the answers.

Matthew Syed is a leading columnist and feature writer for The Times and twice winner of the 'Sports Journalist of the Year' at the British Press Awards. He makes authored features for the BBC current affairs programme Newsnight and regularly appears on CNN International and World Service TV. After graduating from Oxford University with a prize-winning First in Politics, Philosophy and Economics, Matthew was the England table tennis number one for almost a decade, three times Commonwealth Champion, and he twice represented Great Britain in the Olympic Games. Matthew Syed's first book Bounce was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year and became a UK bestseller. Matthew's second book Black Box Thinking was a Sunday Times number one bestseller.