麻豆社

Superstitions in sport are often very precise, as you would expect from a group of people for whom accuracy is so critical. Tennis champion, Rafa Nadal is well-known for his penchant of lining up his water bottles as well as for his prolific ball bouncing. Former World Champion rower, Annie Vernon had a water-based superstition too. She used to pour water from her drinking bottle on to each of her oars before she raced.

Athletics is a rich vein for rituals. “I only ever used to put my left shoe on first,” former 400m runner, Iwan Thomas says of his race preparations, “or my left leg through my pants in the morning first. It was the same at the end of a race, it was always the left shoe that had to come off first.”

This order remains with Thomas to this day. But Thomas had other superstitions too, such as only training in lane 2, and, towards the end of his career, he would pull on his left ear just before going into the blocks.

Meanwhile, American 60m hurdles runner, Christina Clemons always has a pre-meet two days before a race and never the day before and she avoids a particular shade of lipstick. This cautious approach runs in the family. Christina’s husband, 400m runner Carl Clemons won’t sleep in the same bed with Christina before a race. “He will sit in the dark and just be zoned in or just talk to himself in the mirror,” says Christina, “and I’m like ‘you’re weird, but if it works for you, it works for me’.”

Martin Perry found a large group of athletes who had lucky mascots and other objects when he attended the Muller Indoor Grand Prix in Glasgow. British 100m sprinter Harry Aikines-Aryeety has a Lego Superman - “it reminds me of what I am trying to be like – Superman that is.” 60m and 110m hurdler Cameron Fillery reveals he used to have a lucky egg. “My coach made me get rid of that because that was just ridiculous, but I liked it,” he says. Meanwhile, Iwan Thomas had a particularly emotional lucky charm. “I used to run with a medallion that my grandfather gave to me when he died. I’d attach it to his spikes and rub it twice as I got into the blocks.”

Charms work on the field as well as the track. Rugby Union star Lewis Ludlum has a knitted dog he carries round to games. “It’s a retired police dog! If I haven’t had it on me, I’ve had to find other ways to talk myself up and get into the game.” Lewis also carries a four-leaf clover with him!

“It makes you almost feel like two or three inches taller,” says Lewis Ludlum, whose various superstitions above are joined by a set warm-up routine and getting dressed in the same left-right order as Iwan Thomas. Thomas himself says: “if you have rituals that have worked for you in the past you think ‘that’s part of my life, if I break that chain I am going to give myself bad luck.’”

Thomas makes the point that we all have preferred routines, for example a favourite television show we watch in the afternoon or eating lunch at a set time of day, and Annie Vernon asks: “where is line between superstition and routine?”

“Every athlete has a routine, tried and tested under pressure”, Annie continues, “they’re there get you into the right head space and physical space to perform out of your skin, and a way of asserting your control over an unfamiliar, potentially hostile environment.

If that routine involves wearing a particular pair of socks, that’s fine as long as you’re still able to perform. If you forget your lucky socks, do you go to pieces? The best athletes – no, of course – they’ll just adapt their routine.”

Behavioural scientist and psychologist, Professor Stewart Vyse, a specialist in superstitions and critical thinking, pinpoints superstition as a friction between the two parts of our brains, one part being for rational thinking and the other for intuitive feeling.

“Those lucky socks can’t really be lucky,” Professor Vyse says, “but we tend to give in – it’s often called acquiescing – to this more gut level reaction of the brain. We make connections between things that are just coincidental, we give them special significance where there is none there. Superstitions have such a strong psychological pull…I don’t think we’ll ever be rid of them.”