"It took me some time to realize, but I love pressure. If there is one thing that will really take you to another level of performance - to the plateau where your victories are measured in the blink of a millisecond - it might be the ability to embrace pressure, to understand it, to draw it in, to make it your own and to use it to your advantage."

But many athletes still find pressure hard to handle...

When gymnast Kim Zmeskal was just 16 years old and was a favorite going into the 1992 Olympic Games (she won the 1991 all-around title in the World Championships - and the first American to do so..) said this:

"The pressure never stops. It's hard to stay in gymnastics because there are always young gymnasts coming up with new things."

Success itself becomes the problem.

"Success is just as scary as failure. You go for another 'high' to kill that 'high'. It's hard to take when people adore you to the extent - and those same people can turn on you when you don't deliver."

That comment wasn't from an athlete, but from an actress, Elaine Stritch, who discribed what happens to any successful person in the spotlight.

Consider this from PGA golfer Paul Azinger:

"I know guys out here (on the PGA Tour) who fear success, who don't want the pressure that comes with success or the attention. Heck, I've seen guys back off on Sunday afternoon because they know if they win they'll have to give a speech and they're afraid of giving a speech."

Many athletes have found that they have trouble dealing with the expectations which accompany success...

• Andre Aggassi when he was heading into a slump that would last several years, "I sometimes feel that I have an obligation to win, that's not always so satisfying."

• Skier Dian Roffe-Steinrotter hit a slump after she won a silver medal in the Super G at the 1992 Albertville Olympics. "I had a lot of problems, mostly my fault. I think the expectations of having won a medal and being expected to win World Cup races got to me."

• Tennis great Martina Navratilova also talked about the problems that accompany success. "The pressure is tremendous when you feel like your should win it and that if you don't win it, you're failure. It's like, you can't win. If you win, it's because you should. You're vindicated yourself, but you don't get the pure joy of winning that you do when your are the underdog."

• Even less visible athletes notice the pressure and expectations. Shot Putter and Discus athlete Connie Price-Smith explained her poor performance the year following her first Olympic appearance in 1988, "Once you're an Olympian, people expect so much of you. It's been tough to live up to those expectations."

According to Mary Lou Retton (who won the gold medal in the women's gymnastic all-around competition in the 1984 Los Angles Games) expectations to perform are one reason there aren't more repeat Olympians. She reported that only one-third of the 1992 U.S. Olympic team had competed in the previous Games.

"After a while, your start to feel you have to perform to other people's expectations, not your own. That takes a lot of the fun out of training and competing."

Athletes should be trained to handle success, but most of them aren't. In baseball, this problem is called the sophomore jinx because many players who are chosen as "Rookie of the Year" have bad second seasons in the big leagues. Several reasons have been suggested that this happens:

1. As more is expected of them, these players have trouble dealing with the pressure.
2. Now that they're well known, their competitors study them more carefully to spot their flaws and weaknesses.
3. Early success has made these players overconfident, distracted, and/or undertrained.

One difference between a good athlete and a great athlete is the ability to accept the pressure and take it in stride. The term mental toughness means performing well under pressure - regardless of where that pressure comes from. The key is to be able to perform at our normal levels in critical situations.

The trick is knowing when to turn it on and turn it off. In a similiar situation one athlete may panic and say, "I don't know if I can do it." While the other person says, "Great, this is the moment I have been waiting for!" Those two people are both experiencing stress, but they are having differenct responses to the same stress.

In sport that athlete needs to be able to learn to deal with competitive stress, since stress will always be present. Learning ways to deal with or diffuse pressure is an important part of an athletic career. Mark Rypien the 1992 quarterback of the Super Bowl Champions Washington Redskins gives this advice he got from Coach Joe Gibbs;

"Coach told me his definition of pressure is having a chance to prove yourself."

Really, is'nt that what we all want... the chance to prove ourselves? Go out and do it.