Mental Toughness in Sport: Michelle Steele's Story

Based on the Article outlining Michelle Steele’s story of pushing through a challenging scenario, it is clear that this young athlete has a very strong will and great determination. She shows considerable mental toughness in the response to the Vancouver team selections, which as a young athlete was hard to comprehend. The Skeleton event is a very dangerous but is a thrilling event that gives the competitor an adrenaline rush. A group of characteristics have been associated with an athlete’s ability to show the optimal level mental toughness (Jones, 2007). Risk taking is divided into two subcategories; physical and psychological, both of which are vital in acquiring mental toughness for an event such as Skeleton racing. Current measures have been checked in a study to validate the use of questionnaires for determining the mental toughness of an athlete (Crust & Swann, 2011). The story of Michelle is an excellent example of a young athlete showing great mental toughness.

Physical and mental attributes of the athletes are vital in achieving the media hyped idea of being the mentally tougher competitor. The concept of “Mental Toughness” is tossed around without full awareness of what that term means. Mental toughness is one of the most used but least understood terms in applied sport psychology (Jones et al., 2002), Many athletes get asked to show toughness but don’t fully understand exactly what this means in terms of their performance. The study completed developed a ‘framework’ for mental toughness outlining four major components including: mindset, training, competition and post-competition (Jones, 2007). This is related to Michelle Steele and her story of development from a youngster climbing the ranks of the international st...

... middle of paper ...

...2014.olympics.com.au/news/history-devastation-and-steeley- determination [Accessed: 16 Apr 2014].
Crust, L. & Keegan, R. (2010). Mental toughness and attitudes to risk-taking. Personality And Individual Differences, 49 (3), pp. 164--168.
Crust, L. & Swann, C. (2011). Comparing two measures of mental toughness. Personality And Individual Differences, 50 (2), pp. 217--221.
Jones, G., Hanton, S. & Connaughton, D. (2007). A framework of mental toughness in the world's best performers. Sport Psychologist, 21 (2).
Nicholls, A. R., Polman, R. C., Levy, A. R. & Backhouse, S. H. (2008). Mental toughness, optimism, pessimism, and coping among athletes. Personality And Individual Differences, 44 (5), pp. 1182--1192.

Scheier, M., & Carver, C. (1985). Optimism, coping, and health: assessment and implications of generalized outcome expectancies. Health Psychology, 4(3), 219.