NMP Live meets former record-breaking GB Swimming champion and Olympian Mark foster. Mark talks about his sporting achievements, marginal gains and why businesses should improve the health and wellbeing of their employees.
Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Mark Foster
Who inspired you to become an Olympic athlete?
Going back, the inspirations in my life, I was eleven years of age, Duncan Goodhew, who won an Olympic gold medal in 1980 Olympics in Moscow, came to my swimming club and I remember looking at him and seeing the way he swam, and I just went wow, I want to be like you, I want one of these Olympic gold medals. Big inspiration.
My mum was the other one behind me, pushing me, motivating me. First international meet was a major competition, 1986 Commonwealth Games, and at that age, I saw Duncan’s medal and thought I want to go to the Olympics but it was kind of a dream, as a child going I want to do that, I want to do that. It’s one thing wanting, it’s another thing doing it. That started, I suppose, subconsciously that went in to my mindset, and then the Commonwealth Games 1986 coming away with a bronze medal was an achievement, but I always set out to become Olympic champion.
I can look back over my career, I went to five Olympics and never became Olympic champion, but it never stopped me believing and wanting to become an Olympic champion.
The time I became a professional athlete was 21 years of age, I’d worked as a courier diver, fitted double glazing windows, worked as a groundsman, worked in a council office, I worked on building sites lifting round plasterboards, and I realized that I liked manual labour. Swimming, to me, is manual labour, it just happens to be my love, but I was trying those other jobs and trying to make ends meet.
Then in 1991 a friend of mine said ‘I’ll support you for a year to the Olympic games’ for ’92. I went to the ’92 Olympic games, came 6th, Speedos sponsored me, and I think that was the big shift. All of a sudden swimming became a career, because there was no money in the sport, so all of a sudden having someone backing you and going ‘you’re good, go and do it, let’s see what you can do’ and then within six months I broke the world record, became world champion and things started.
So, had someone backed me earlier, had there been money in the sport, potentially things may have been different, I might have won the Olympic gold medal.
Can you summarise your major sporting achievements?
Okay, so I have won six World Championships, eleven European Championships, two Commonwealth Games, in total forty seven international medals, I have been to five Olympic games and I broke the world record eight times.
Did you suffer many setbacks throughout your career?
I always say to people that I learned more from my failings than I did my winnings, but I think of the word FAIL and I think From Action I Learn. And I never looked at it subconsciously, it was one of those things when I got out the water, when I did do well I kept going ‘I can do better’ and when I did fail, as it were, I didn’t fail, I leant.
I always learnt something, I learnt that some of the training I was doing wasn’t working, or some the weights I was doing wasn’t working, maybe I made a mistake in the race, or I didn’t get off the block quick enough, there was always something I took away from every experience. So, over the career I broke the world record eight times.
I look back now and when I started swimming I had a best time and I always wanted to go faster, faster, faster, and it was kind of like, what makes me go faster? So when I broke the world record and everyone went ‘phenomenal – fastest man in the world’ and I went ‘yeah, but…’ subconsciously I finished my best time. So I kept wanting to go quicker, and of course records are there to be broken, and people broke them.
That was always my target, for me to go fast, and not worry about anybody else, just how fast I could be, and how good I could be.
What is the mindset of a winner?
You’ve got to be committed. You’ve got a great awareness. You’ve got a great belief. You need to…I have a saying of ‘fly with the eagles, don’t peck with the hens’, and that’s kind of surround yourself with like minded people, and I was probably quite lucky throughout my career that I had those people around me.
I could have easily gone off on another route, but a lot of the time I surrounded myself, with people that were of the same mindset – a peak performer, someone that’s motivated, and not being afraid of failure. I think the bottom line is you have got to be, because you learn a lot about yourself by trying things, taking yourself out your comfort zone, there are so many words to describe it, an elite performer, I think, but ultimately it’s about your attitude, and your behavior reflects in your results.
How important is failure to become a winner?
You do need to fail to learn. You need to fail to grow. I say, yes I won a lot, I lost a lot, and I think the loosing was the thing that…I didn’t like loosing, so it motivated me to do better, and better, and better, until sometimes I won and sometimes I still lost, but it never stopped me standing up there and having a go.
With sport, every time you stand on the block you are vulnerable, because you don’t know what is going to happen. Every race is different, every game is different, and I think every day with people things are different. But, I think that to enable people to grow they need to step out of their comfort zone, and whether it be - in sporting terms - I say to people, I hate long distance, so you know what, go and do something, go and do an open water swim, it’s long and I don’t like it, but then you learn a lot about yourself by getting in there and having a go, so I do it. Just so I can go ’did that’ and also give myself a pat on the back for doing it, and just take yourself out your comfort zone, try something that is completely different.
Human beings are very good at doing something they are comfortable doing, that they’re good at doing, so they avoid doing the things they are not good at doing. For me, getting up at 5 o’clock in the morning and jumping in freezing cold water was horrendous, but I knew I had to do that to get to where I wanted to go to, so embrace what you’re not good at and what you don’t like doing, because the more you do it, the better you will become.
How did it feel to carry the flag for Team GB at the Beijing Olympics?
Carrying the flag around the opening ceremony was huge for me. It was my fifth Olympics, I was thirty-eight years of age and I knew underneath it all that it was going to be my last Olympic games, and I’d been on the team for twenty three years, and I was kind of the granddaddy of the team.
So I was our team captain, I had been our team captain for a number of years, and every team within Team GB, so you know, tennis, hockey, athletics, cycling, diving, everyone had a team captain and every team nominates someone to carry the flag round. What was quite humbling for me was that all the athletes from Team GB as a whole nominated me to carry the flag round at the opening ceremony.
So that was a humble moment, I think there has been twenty seven Olympic games, so I am one of the 27 flag bearers, team captains, and just walking in to the bird’s nest and leading out Team GB was very emotional, and I kept pinching myself thinking this wont last forever so walk very, very slowly and enjoy the moment, really, and it was an amazing moment. It was phenomenal.
Was it difficult to retire from competitive swimming?
Yeah, it was hard to decide. It was hard to retire. I think I knew at some point, any athlete knows it’s going to be sooner rather than later because your body’s going to give up. I didn’t stretch it for as long as possible, I probably could have done another Olympics if I had wrapped myself in cotton wool, but I always wanted to retire at the right time and at my time, thirty eight in swimming terms is getting on, and I didn’t want to fall off the side, I wanted to go out on a high.
So, as I say, carrying the Olympic flag around the opening ceremony was a huge high, and it was kind of like, what do I do next? I’ve been a swimmer, I’m a high performing athlete, high performance swimmer, where do I go? I think what happened was another world opened up. I did Strictly Come Dancing first of all and I went from being well known in the sports world, but in the real world not known, and all of a sudden I became the swimmer that did Strictly Come Dancing.
So Strictly Come Dancing gave me a platform to the general public, if you like, and then from that doing motivational speaking, hosting events. I suppose I didn’t realise that it’s all to do with a mindset.
How important are marginal gains in both swimming and business?
Small changes can have big results.
With marginal gains, for me, with 50 freestyle, it was 21 seconds, it’s not a long time. But if I broke my race down from reacting off the block and if I say I going to focus on reacting off the block and jumping off the block, there are so many exercises I can do to get off the block faster – reaction training. There are so many things I can do to get my legs stronger, so that when I push off the block I am stronger. So that’s just getting off the block, to entering the water, to streamline in to the water, the kicks underneath the water. I can break down my race so much, stroke tempo, the turn, the glide, the finish, there is so many things that I can do to change 21 seconds.
It is quite interesting, when you are in the moment of swimming, it sort of, everything slows down when you are in the now, and it is trying to get people in the now I suppose, and people in their job, or business in general, trying to breakdown every little component. Because I think there are improvements that people can make everywhere, people themselves can make improvements, personal improvement, and I think that if people look at making personal improvement then as a whole the company can make some big improvements.
What can businesses do to improve the health and wellbeing of their employees?
I think ‘Healthy Body, Healthy Mind’, and one of the things for me is that when people are moving they think better, when people are fitter they feel better.
Now, elite athletes highlight what’s possible with the human body, but going below that it’s all to do with moderation. So, if people are aware that if they are fitter, and I’m not on about running a marathon, but if they are a little bit fitter, they feel they have got more energy, they feel better in themselves.
I think within every company they should promote health and wellbeing, you know, your health is your wealth, if they promote that side of it people will turn up, and when they do turn up and they show up they will have more energy, they’ll have more self esteem, that surely you will get more productive people in the workplace.
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