It’s in the timing

Daily Telegraph, Page: 83. Wednesday, 23 July 2008

Don’t believe what they tell you about the Olympics. They like to claim the Games are all about sport and peace, about goodwill and the brotherhood of humanity. They like to pretend it’s all about being your best, about striving for perfection, about achieving your inner potential.
It’s all garbage, of course.
The Olympics are really about waiting in line for a ticket, waiting in line for food, waiting for the starter’s gun and waiting for the fat woman next to you to finally wedge into her seat.
So meet Warren Potent. If ever an athlete was prepared for an Olympic Games, it is the Sydney-based rifle champion. He knows all about waiting.
Most athletes reach their best by their mid to late 20s. Some late bloomers leave it to their early 30s. Potent waited until his mid-40s to peak.
Now 46, Potent is regarded as one of Australia’s strongest gold medal prospects for Beijing.
Consider his chosen sport, lie spread-eagled on the ground and aim for a target barely 10mm wide. From 50m away.
He almost never misses. At an age when most men are forced to squint at a newspaper headline less than a metre in front of them, Potent has emerged from obscurity to defy convention, the normal ravages of middle-age and finally fulfill the promise of his surname.
Fellow shooter and gold medallist Russell Mark has dubbed Potent the ‘Tiger Woods’ of shooting. In the past 12 months, the shooter has won three World Cup events, equalled the world record score for his event and consistently recorded near-perfect tallies.
So how has he done it? Potent is a man who chooses his words as carefully as his aim. “Stopped getting nervous for some reason,” he says. “Used to get nervous. Pretty nervous.”
Don’t go looking for any hint of deep psychological ploys or mysticism to explain Potent’s late surge to the top of the rankings. Potent is a man who prizes understatement.
Try him. Now Warren, your event obviously requires many skills; the ability to control your heart rate under enormous stress, the knowledge to quickly analyse the impact of a soft breeze on the trajectory of a tiny bullet travelling at almost supersonic speed, along with the sight and patience of an army sniper.
“As long as you can see and you’ve got a pulse, you should be all right.”
Over the past two years, Potent’s confidence has grown to the point where he knows he is among the best on the range and expects a near perfect score each time he takes aim.
“I still get a bit nervous, but not so much any more,” he says. “For some reason I’m much more confident now and a lot more relaxed.”
Next month Potent gets to put all that to the test. He shrugs and says the occasion and the growing expectations won’t matter that much.
But then he has, after all, been waiting much longer than most.