Juliane Wurm Instagram – Should we really celebrate successful athletes so much? . There are a couple of reasons why I‘m confused by that. One is that competing very much involves focussing on one thing, often oneself, in order to increase individual sports performance. Often this is mostly intrinsically motivated, sometimes the motivation might be rooted somewhere else (which might be prone to creating questionable dependencies). When I started climbing as a 10y-old-kid, I absolutely fell in love with this way of movement. I seemed to have a talent and was told that consequently I’d probably do well in comps. I had done comps in gymnastics and track&field before and my childhood heroes were successful gymnasts, skiers, runners and soon climbers… Throughout the following years I committed for this comp path and very much enjoyed the lifestyle. I spent most of my time training or thinking about training, climbing and comps and received huge support from my environment. I wasn’t very eager to try hard in school, didn’t care very deeply about other people’s well-being or my social relationships. However, my often egocentric behavior seemed to be justifiable through medals and even seemed to be part of my talent in sports. . Ever since I stopped competing, people celebrated me for having been a successful competitor and it has been quite a door-opener for me. Looking back, I’ve surely learned a lot as an athlete and it shaped who I am today, but increasing competitive performance also came with a questionably narrow path to go. In my eyes many of the people we celebrate as our (sports) heroes are good at going this narrow path and ignoring many things and people around unless it might help increasing their performance. I see the point that it’s fascinating to see a (sports) person being so absorbed by something and thus showing incredible performance, but it irritates me that we’re so willing to encourage and celebrate that behavior or that we don’t shed enough light on the ways competitors strive to success in a more holistic and realistic way. I’m not sure if we’re aware of the direction in which comp sports pushes young athletes, imo, a system that in many cases is hard to exit.