Jonny Wilkinson: born the greatest or made the greatest?

Finn December 13, 2011 8
Jonny Wilkinson: born the greatest or made the greatest?

It was a sad day for English rugby when on December 12th England’s all-time leading points scorer, Jonny Wilkinson, announced his retirement from international rugby. But was he born great or made great by hard work, asks Finn Grist.

Wilkinson was a massive inspiration to me as a sportsman and in my eyes one of the world’s greatest, being part of the international set up since his debut in 1999, at the age of just 18. He will be best remembered for his last-minute winning drop goal in the 2003 World Cup final against Australia, as well as playing integral roles in numerous Lions tours and Six Nations competitions.

But what made Jonny the player he was? Was he born with the natural ability to play for England? Or was his immense skill a result of the almost obsessive way in which he trained? At the age of just 12, Wilkinson told his rugby master at Pierrepoint school, “I want to play for England, that’s all I want,” and I think it’s this drive that made him the sportsman that he has been for over decade. He was known for staying behind after training for at least two hours to practise his kicking and this even caused him to suffer a sportsman’s hernia in November 2005 (one of many injuries he was to suffer during his career).

But part of the reason for his injury proneness was his willingness to put his body on the line to help whatever team he might be playing for. Many people say that great sportsmen/women, musicians or artists are born with a natural ability for their field, and the word ‘genius’ is often banded about too easily.  This question over natural ability against developed ability is called the nature/nurture debate.

I am firmly on the side of ‘nurture’. I believe that a person is shaped by their experiences and their environment, and less by their genes. People who disagree with this view often present examples like Mozart, who wrote his first symphony at the age of 9. However, a way of determining if someone is an expert in their field is by using the 10,000 hours rule. Mozart’s father being a music teacher meant that by the time he was 9, by playing for hours every day, that he had amassed way over the 10,000 hours worth of playing time and cold therefore be considered a music expert.

Swiftly bringing the subject back to sport; I was lucky enough to have a training session with the then England head coach, Martin Johnson, and a following Q&A session. When asked what it takes to reach international level, he simply said “hard work”. He then went on to list examples of players who weren’t maybe as good as others but who worked extremely hard to get to where they wanted to be, as well as players who looked like they would be world class, who let it slip away because they didn’t work hard enough.

I also went to primary school with sportsmen who are now breaking through into elite level. Oliver Wilkin, of Ealing Cricket Club and Loughborough University, has just been offered a contract by Middlesex, and Will Magie, Leeds University, was named as captain for the USA U20 team for the 2011 IRB Junior World Trophy campaign in Tbilisi, Georgia. What I can say for both of them is that they worked hard from a very young age towards a goal of playing sport professionally and that’s why they are starting to achieve their aims.

There are examples of sportsmen who started playing their sport late in life, such as England Cricket captain Andrew Strauss, who only begun playing cricket at the age of 15, or Ian Wright, who signed his first professional contract at the age of 22. But I don’t think this points to the fact that they were ‘destined’ to play their sport from birth. They would have already had the motor skills necessary, which are developed between the ages of 4 and 6, and combining this with enough hard work is what led them to excelling in their sports.

When I was 15, I was unfortunate enough to play against a young boy called Owen Farrell. He was only known to us back then as being the son of then Great Britain Rugby League captain, now Saracens head coach, Andy Farrell, but has now gone on to secure a starting role in the Saracens 1st XV and there are even talks of him being in the England squad for the upcoming Six Nations. Now many people will suggest that playing rugby is in his genes; that because his father was a great sportsman, he will be too. And there are many examples of father-son sportsmen like Harry and Jamie Redknapp, Chris and Stuart Broad, and the Frank Lampards. People suggest that the ‘sporting gene’ was passed from father to son and that it couldn’t be a coincidence that they both are successful at the same sport. I totally agree that it is not a coincidence but a mixture of environmental factors that leads to successful sporting offspring.

Jonny Wilkinson made it by himself, worked hard, and that’s what makes him one of rugby’s greatest ever players.

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POSTED IN » Sport, Uncategorized
About the author: Finn View all posts by
Finn Grist, 19. I am currently on a gap year but hoping to study English with Creative Writing next year at university. I currently play football and cricket for Brentham, and coach an under-16s rugby team at Ealing Rugby Club.

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  • Josh C

    I agree with you completely Finn. I don’t really think that people are born with these talents, it’s hard work that gives us the skills we have today. An excellent article by the way. Well done

  • Aj

    Hard work very time

  • Cbear

    do you not think inherited features such as amount of fast twitch fibres to slow twitch would have had an effect on him? 

  • Ant

    Not bad but i find that you have neglected genetics almost entirely in this this article and devoted it to showing how nurture makes a successful sportsperson. as there is nothing that can prove whether it is nature or nurture that produces world class athletes i think that your article could have been more balanced giving the advantages of both theories and then coming up with your own opinion as to what is more important. in my opinion i think that nature and nurture go hand in hand and are therefore as important as each other.

    You mention the 10,000 hour rule in the article which you state is the minimum that determines someone to be a world class athlete and the more hard work you put in the better you will become which is fair to say but take this for example imagine you took two completely different amateur athletes one who played tennis and one who played rugby, both have developed motor skills and then you train them both for precisely 10,000 hours at football. Could you then determine that both players would be exactly as good as each other on the football pitch? Or do you think that one athlete might be more naturally talented at football despite having the same training and therefore play better?

    As we know in order to become a world class athlete it takes a wide variety of skills some which can be trained and some that cant. the Olympics is a very good example for this argument as if natural talent was not a major factor all of the athletes in 100m sprint would run exactly the same times. That is of course assuming the all have trained as much as each other which to get into the Olympics you can assume they have trained for a quite similar amount of hours each

    i think that natural talent is what steers you towards, and helps you, along with hard work in becoming a world class athlete. it is not just how many hours you are willing to dedicate to training something that will make you great it how you use your own natural ability to your advantage plus incredibly hard work that make you great.

    we had this argument so you know i had to jump on this   

  • Finn

    This article was an opinion piece, written to show my view on the nature/nurture debate, this is why I focus on the nurture side, to allow others to put forward their point of view. I do agree that no definitive proof to say whether one side is right or the other, and what I found in my research of this article is that when one scientific study backs up the nurture side, there is another that then supports nature. I do think genetics play about a 1% role (if that) in whether a person is a successful athlete/sportsman/performer.

    I think your argument about giving a tennis player and a rugby player 10,000 hours worth of coaching is slightly missing the point. If you gave them 10,000 hours worth of coaching when they were young, when the mind and body is most susceptible to growth and change then I think they would both be pretty successful at football. I don’t think they would be exactly the same but not for genetic reasons. Their motor skill development between 4-6 is definitely not going to be directly identical (one may be better with hand-eye co-ordination, one better with hand-foot for example) and one may be more advanced in motor skill terms just because they have developed more or earlier. Also, things like muscle mass and length are directly affected by hormone (testosterone) production during puberty – which itself is affected by environmental factors such as current muscle mass, age, smoking etc. 

    But thinking logically, how can there even be ‘natural talent’ in football? There is no shooting gene, no heading gene, no passing gene. These are all TECHNICAL skills that use skill-related-fitness components like co-ordination and balance, which, I say again, are developed between the ages of 4 and 6.

    Again, saying that if there was no natural talent at the Olympics then everyone would run the 100m the same time is pretty silly. The time that someone runs a 100m is affected by factors such as muscle size and length, as well as the type of training they had when they were younger. For everyone to run the same time this would suggest that the athletes were the same exact height to the millimetre, had the same muscle length and muscle fibres, the same EXACT training from the moment they came out of the womb right up to the day of the competition, and had the same desire to win. If you then say that factors like height are purely genetic and therefore affect a 100m time, I would ask you to look at Usain Bolt. Sprinters are typically known to be average-height, stocky runners with large amounts of fast twitch muscle fibres. But Usain Bolt stands at 6ft 5, the tallest 100m record holder in history (or as far as wikipedia records go back which is 1968). He is also not built like fellow world record holders like Asafa Powell, Justin Gatlin, or Maurice Green in terms of muscle size. Surely this shows how an athlete who doesn’t fit the typical mould of his field has managed to get to the top by working hard and dedicating his life to being the world’s fastest man? He was exposed to sport by his brother at a young age and this is what facilitated his motor skill development. He was trained as a sprinter since the age of 12 as well so it his success is no surprise to me.

    If you were a world class athlete, would you want someone undermining all the hard work you’d put in by saying you were born with the talent?

    In response to ‘CBear’, the amount of fast/slow twitch fibres when you’re born is more or less fixed. Then, your environment is going to affect the levels of fibres that develop as I’ve said at the start of this increasingly long response.

    I think the drive to succeed is also not genetic but instilled in you in your upbringing by your environment like your family and friends, as well as the country you’re from and other factors like role models.

  • Bill

    There’s a great book called Bounce by Mathew Syed about this. Syed was British table tennis champ. At one point more of the top-ranked brits lived in a few streets around him than in the rest of the UK – because the best coach was at their club. They didn’t move there, they did their 10000 hours and got to be the best coaching as they grew up. Great book

  • Ant

    Firstly you state that what you have found from your research is that for every argument that supports the nurture side there is another that then supports nature. So by saying that genetics plays only a 1% role in whether you become a successful sportsman contradicts your own research.

    All that i was trying to point out is that you have clearly not done enough research as your argument, stacked up solely on the side of nurture has very little scientific fact to support it and is therefore completely bias. Having an opinion is fine but it is worthless if you cannot back it up in any way other than obsessing about motor skill development for skill related fitness between the ages of 4-6 and hard work.

    Where is your proof that Usain bolt is the hardest working 100m sprinter in the world surely there are other athletes willing to work twice as hard to be in his position. Are you telling me that hard work alone allowed him to leave world class sprinters in his dust and then celebrate before getting to the line and natural ability played no part.

    you managed to finish off by supporting my argument where you state:  

    “the amount of fast/slow twitch fibres when you’re born is more or less
    fixed. Then, your environment is going to affect the levels of fibres
    that develop”

    This is a perfect example of nature and nurture working together. You are born with a fixed amount of slow/ fast twitch fibres which is a genetic trait or natural we can say.
    You then go on to say that your environment is what determines the level to which these muscle fibres will develop this falls firmly into the category of nurture.

    So in order to become a good sprinter for example you would need a large amount of fast twitch muscle fibres combined with the correct training and development of those muscle fibres and not completely rely on a training and development on it own.

    nature/nurture
    50%  /50%

    It is incorrect to argue for one theory more than the other with nothing other than your opinion to support your claims 

  • Finn

    I was saying about scientific research that there are studies for both sides that’s why its debatable which you can listen to.

    I’m going to state again. This is… an OPINION piece, so obviously it is gonna be bias because it’s my opinion. I never stated I was putting both sides of the argument. Mainly because the other side of the argument is wrong. 

    The amount of muscle fibres being fixed at birth means that when you are a baby the amount of muscle fibres is not going to differ from baby to baby. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a muscular baby, they are developed later in life because of physical activity.

    The development of motor skills is basic scientific fact and can be found on google pretty easily. I did not write this article based on opinion but read about the subject then made an educated decision when presented with facts.

    If Jonny Wilkinson was born in Zambia would he still be a world class rugby player? Because you believe he was born with his ability. 

    A final thing… you said in your first comment 
    “ to become a world class athlete it takes a wide variety of skills some which can be trained and some that cant” 
    What’s an example of a skill that can’t be trained?

    You clearly oppose my side of the article because you think there is no research involved but where is your scientific research or any facts? All you’ve done is try and undermine the points made in the article.

    I recommend you read these books

    http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class-Performers/dp/1591842247

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounce-Myth-Talent-Power-Practice/dp/0007350546

    and also look for an article called “The Talent Myth” then when