For those of you who did not hear, two young swimmers have broken two of Michael Phelps’ world records.

Nineteen-year-old Kristoff Milak swam to a new world record in the 200-meter butterfly at the FINA World Championships. Michael Phelps held that record for over 18-years…nearly as long a Milak had been alive! Milak’s swim bested the previous record by 0.78 seconds. That doesn’t sound like much, but it is a huge margin in a sport where shaving a tenth off a best time can take years of hard work.

Phelps was quoted in The New York Times as saying, “That kid’s (Milak’s) last 100 was incredible. He put together a great 200 fly from start to finish.”

While Phelps was “frustrated” to see the record fall, he also said he “couldn’t be happier to see how he [Milak] did it.”

That’s the sign of a true competitor and champion. No excuses given. No “yeah, but…” uttered. Just praise for an incredible feat.

I was most impressed by Michael Phelps not undermining the record setting swim with one word.

What word could undermine the entirety of the accomplishment?

TALENT.

Yep, you read that right. Saying that Kristoff Milak was a great “talent” would have been akin to saying that he “just got lucky.”

If you happen to be lucky, you could have something favorable happen without putting any work into that favorable outcome.

Same is true for talent.

How many times have you heard a parent say that one of the players on your child’s the soccer team is talented?

How many times have you heard an announcer for a sporting event (you pick the sport…soccer, baseball, basketball…it doesn’t matter) say that one of the players “is an amazing talent?”

But I would argue that talent is NOT the crucial factor.

So would Angela Duckworth, who wrote an entire book on the subject.

In her 2016 book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Duckworth writes about her study of why naturally talented people often fail to live up to their potential, while other less gifted individuals achieve great things…like breaking world records.

She’s not alone in this thought.

Daniel F. Chambliss was way ahead of the curve. In 1989, he wrote a thought provoking article entitled “The Mundanity of Excellence.” In his article, Chambliss explained that sports give a defined metric for excellence, unlike art, music, or just being the best dad. Sports are measured by success in competition.

Chambliss, a swimmer himself, studied swimmers because he was familiar with the sport. Swimming, like many sports, stratifies based on success. Stratification is a way of segmenting the swimmers based on times in specific events. Either you can swim the event in a specific time, or you cannot. If you can, you are moved up to a higher level, and compete at that level going forward.

But Chambliss found that raw, natural talent did not make the best swimmer. It was something more. To find what that “something more” was, he studied a lot of swim teams over a 20-month time period. He found that, to his surprise and many other coaches’ surprise, most swim teams trained nearly the exact same way.

In fact, Chambliss wrote about why talent does not lead to excellence (sounds kinda like Angela Duckworth). He stated that “factors other than talent explain athletic success more precisely.”

Chambliss identified three statements that he felt were the keys to success.

1)Excellence is mundane;

2)Motivation is mundane;

3)Maintaining mundanity is the key psychological challenge to the pursuit of excellence.

Notice that repeated word…Mundane?

Mundane is defined as lacking interest or excitement; dull.

So all the work that goes on behind the scenes is the boring, tedious, and wearisome labor that leads to excellence. Staring at a boring black line on the bottom of a swimming pool is pretty mundane.

The problem is that you and I only see the culmination of the underlying work.

When you watch a world-record-setting swim, you don’t see the years of daily swimming practice that got the athlete to that level.

When you see a home run hit, you don’t see the hours of batting practice the baseball player has performed.

When you see the goal scored in a World Cup soccer match, you don’t see the hundreds of practice shots taken daily by the player.

So where is all of this leading?

As the title says…Michael Phelps was NOT just talented.

Michael worked harder than any other swimmer he trained with. He never missed a practice…not for a holiday, not for his birthday, not for anything. He practiced the small things over and over again until they were automatic. He and his coach, Bob Bowman, adjusted things to make Michael better.

I can remember when Michael was 15-years-old, and he told me that Bob had changed his butterfly so that he would breathe every stroke, rather than every other stroke. It helped Michael keep his hips higher in the water, which in turn made him faster. That change was contrary to everything that was being done in the sport at that time.

That single change was mundane in and of itself.

But when practiced every day until it was automatic, it became a foundation upon which Michael could build.

And build he did, going on to win 22-Olympic Medals in his career.

As an aside, Caeleb Dressel broke the second world record that I alluded to…the 100-meter butterfly. Dressel also breathed every stroke in that race, like Phelps had so many years prior.

But it was boring, mundane, daily work that got Michael to the pinnacle.

Michael was quoted later in the NY Times article regarding Kristoff Milak breaking his world record:

“It happened because there was a kid who wanted to do it, who dreamed of doing it, who figured out what it would take to do it, who worked on his technique until it was beautiful and who put in the really, really hard work that it takes to do it,” Phelps said in a phone interview. “My hat’s off to him.”

Notice that Michael did not use the word “talent.”

Next time you hear someone say that a player/ swimmer/ musician/ actor is “talented,” I hope you remember that the performance that you just saw was the culmination of an awful lot of time, energy, and hard work.