ONCE upon a time I used to encounter a dog whose favourite hobby was chasing cars. Every time I drove this particular road, the dog would emerge from the gate of a bungalow once it heard my car approach. It would stand and wait until I passed. Then it would race down the road yelping and barking after my car.

As this is a narrow road, it was not possible to travel it a great speed.
The dog was a collie and it was capable of staying with the car for about 100m. It would run along side the car, snapping at the rear wheel.

Sometimes, just to see what would happen, I would speed up a little; the dog would quicken also.

Then one day, I decided to see what would happen if I stopped.
As I approached the gate the dog appeared and got into the ready position. Once I was passed the gate it took off after me, barking and snapping as usual. I led it on for 30 metres. Then I stopped the car and turned off the engine.

The dog stopped running. It stopped barking too.

It looked at the car, then at the wheel, then back to the car again.
It stood there puzzled and clearly did not know what to do. After a short while the dog began to walk back towards the gate. At that point I started the engine and took off as fast as I could.
When I looked in my rearview mirror, I could see the dog haring down the road after me.

The dog had spent its whole life dreaming of catching a car. When I stopped it finally caught one,  it did not have a clue what to do next.

How often have we seen this scene played out on the sports field?

The underdog takes on the champion and has a right go at it. With 10 minutes to go in the contest, the result is in doubt. Yet even though the winning line is in sight for the underdog, it does not pull away. No, it hangs in there clinging to a precarious lead. Then, just as the underdog is about to grab victory, the champion steps up a gear and drives home the winning score.

In this case, both the champion and the underdog are comfortable when they are playing out their regular roles. By not falling too far behind, the champion knows when to surge for victory. As for the underdog, it is fine when it is chasing victory; it is when victory is in its grasp it does not know what to do.

We saw a real-life example of this in Croke Park last Sunday when Wexford played Dublin in the Leinster football semi-final. Wexford have a good team. They have been chasing success for several years now. They have reached National League and Leinster finals but always seem to come a cropper when they face the football superpowers such as Dublin, Kerry, Tyrone and Cork.

It was the same last Sunday. Even though Wexford were not given a chance by most commentators, they took the game to Dublin and snapped at the Dubs’ heels throughout the first half.
A Wexford upset looked even more likely when Dublin’s Diarmuid Connolly was sent off early in the second half. Wexford were playing well and Dublin were struggling with their form.

With the extra man it was suddenly advantage Wexford. Sharpshooter, Ben Brosnan was having a good day. Once Wexford got numerical advantage however, he and the other forwards started to miss, relatively easy scores. They kicked 11 wides in the second half, six of which were scoreable.

The other side of the sending off story was that the Dublin players realised their run of unbeaten championship games was in danger of ending. The 14 players left on the field began to put in an extra effort to compensate for Connolly’s absence. Dublin pulled away in the last few minutes of the game leaving Wexford puzzled and dispirited.

A similar story began to unfold in Wimbledon on Thursday last. The Czech, Lukas Rosol, (ranked 100th in the world and better at doubles tennis than singles) caused a major upset by defeating former Wimbledon champion, Rafael Nadal (ranked 2) in the second round.
of the Wimbledon Championships.

This was not a fluky win. Rosol played out of his skin. Every shot was hit with purpose and counted. In the fifth set Rosol jogged to his  seat at each change of ends. He calmly sipped his drinks, ate his snack, towelled off and jogged back to baseline ready for action. And what action! Serve after serve had Nadal struggling and every return put Nadal at a disadvantage.

Rosol had caught his prey.

When Saturday came it was a different story. Lukas Rosol found himself in the unusual role of favourite in a round of a major championship. His opponent was Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany.
Kohlschreiber is ranked 272 in the world. As the New York Times correspondent put it, “he could walk through Wimbledon Village, and lots of other villages undisturbed.”

Rosol did not kick on from the Nadal victory as a champion might; he retreated to his regular role as a chaser. The result was almost inevitable, Rosol lost in three straight sets. The third set was surely the most telling of all, as Rosol lost a tiebreak 8-6.

The symptoms that paralysed Lukas Rosol, Ben Brosnan and the Wexford team over the last few days are often the result of a fear of success.

This is a completely different problem to the fear of failure.
Wexford and Lukas Rosol are not afraid of failure. God knows, they live with it all the time. If they feared failure, they would never compete. The fear of success is a far more subtle and insidious problem.

It is a problem that is usually deep rooted in the subconscious. For athletes there are often other consequences to attaining a goal.
For example, becoming a top-ranked tennis player would probably force Lukas Rosol to give up the comfortable and reasonably lucrative doubles partnership he currently enjoys on the tennis circuit.

Likewise, winning a Leinster or All-Ireland would change the status of the current Wexford footballers within their county forever. Maybe they would not like that as much as they think they would.
The side effects of success can be a real problem for some people, and deep down in their subconscious they are not willing to change their current state and deal with these issues.

Fear of success is not confined to sport. It is often the reason why good musicians do not quit the day job and go professional, or why people do not start their own business, or change their lifestyle with regards to eating or smoking.

For some it is much easier to chase the car down the road, rather than catch it and bring it home.

That involves learning the skills of driving. Wanting success is an admirable trait, knowing how to deal with success is the hallmark of a champion.