Cotton vs Wavelength

This was not set to be a normal day in the office, I was in London at the GlaxoSmithKline human performance laboratory. I was going to be studied, they don’t test on mice anymore, they have long since cut out the middleman apparently, so this was all about me.

I looked at the agenda, a bunch of out of shape journalists (myself at the forefront) were to be pitted against a collection of the finest UK ‘Talent’ (their words not mine) I was up against big wave surf legend Andrew Cotton.

Lucky him, he was facing an out of shape, washed up news hack. The stereotypes couldn’t be more played out but through the haze of last night I thought I had a real chance of being better at something than Cotty. Let’s face it, it certainly wasn’t going to be surfing, so now was my time to shine.

The tests had been devised by Professor Vincent Walsh of University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience along with Dunlop to determine if Cotty, through his big wave surfing, had a preconditioned superior memory that was able to stay in control even during heavy stress and anxiety within the brain. This we were destined to find out.

Alongside Cotton were a collection of equally toned and sharp looking specimens including multiple Isle of Man TT winner John McGuinness, two-time British Touring Car Champion Colin Turkington, British Champion downhill skater Peter Connolly, experienced climber Louis Parkinson and Le Mans racing driver Oliver Webb.

The challenge we faced that day is apparently a classic one, the main crux would see us flicking through a host of images while simultaneously trying to answer simple maths type problems.

To give you an idea – grim and shocking pictures were juxtaposed with a nice set of flowery meadows and trotting ponies, although to be frank the vast majority of the nicer images seemed to err on the smutty side of life. No worries I thought… at least I was in my comfort zone.

Cotty said some of the images reminded him of a Saturday night in Barnstaple

I relaxed and seriously started to believe that I had a reasonable chance of upending a legend of our sport. After all, all he does is tackle monster waves, whereas sitting in front of a computer all day looking at grotty pictures and pressing a few buttons was definitely my forte. He was on a hiding to none.

After a few hours of introduction and a few more sitting around waiting for our turn, we were given the nod and we were off.

The next thirty minutes was a mish mash of emotions, a cross between Candy Crush and the Exorcist, all while juggling a baby’s head and trying to add up your shopping bill.

The tests are specially selected to elicit an emotional response. They’re designed to distract your brain away from what you are actually supposed to be doing and they ultimately determine how you stay in control and handle fear in the face off these emotions.

What the professor probably already knew – and what the rest of us were about to find out – was that elite athletes, whether they are bearing down on a 50ft wave, taking a bend at 200mph on the Isle of Man or hanging off a cliff with nothing more than a bag of chalk for company, would all remain calm and still be able to make rational decisions despite the mental pressure.

Once the tests were complete I felt very different about my possible performance. My mind felt completely jumbled especially by the disturbing pictures. The images themselves didn’t necessarily disgust me (although they were very grim at times) rather they seemed to completely smash my concentration and trail of thought. The numbers jumbled in my mind and at points I couldn’t even remember what I was trying to do.

 

I performed considerably better when the pictures were more favourable. With the nicer images in full flow I seemed to hit my sweet spot and the numbers began making sense, but I still knew I was in trouble.

Fast forward three weeks and the results were in, they were a little tricky to digest at first but the bottom line remained fairly clear. The athletes memories performed 20% better than non-athletes mental performance under pressure and their brains were 10% faster in the face of intense mental stress.

So how badly did I actually do? Well it turns out I was actually the most accurate of the journalists at baseline, but pride comes before a fall and I was also the one whose accuracy suffered the most under the stress as my performance nose-dived from above 90% to just over 75%.

How did Cotty summarise his victory? Apparently the images reminded him of a Saturday night in Barnstaple. So it seems not only was his big wave surfing getting one over on me but also his Devonshire upbringing tipped the balance between hero and zero.