NORTHERN PLANNER

So Michael Phelps got his record. Well done him, but it was tinged with disappointment when Mr Invincible lost the 200m butterfly at the final touch.

But it struck me how gracious and generous he was in defeat.

That's what often gets missed with coverage of sports and the elite participants at the top. They go out year in, year out, to fight each other tooth and nail for medals, points, trophies and money, but the adversarial nature of the actual battle belies the brotherly/sisterly culture around it.

Performance athletes (with some notable exceptions of course) are bound together by mutual respect and the sheer hard work involved in what they do. That's even truer of those at the very top.

My own experience – of training 5 hours a day, travelling to strange countries without Mum and Dad (chaperoned of course) from the age of 10 and having to deal with the pain of losing, seeing months, years of work and hope going up in smoke and, even tougher, learning to handle winning. Not letting it make you arrogant and be kind to those who lost to you on the day- was that experience this abnormal made you incredibly close to those you went through it with because only they knew could grasp what it was like.