The saddest sight in sport is to observe a marvelous athlete not so much go into decline as suddenly burn-out before one’s eyes. In almost seven decades of passionate association with sport – forty years as competitor and all that time and still continuing as avid spectator – I have watched a long line of sportsmen falter and fade from glory and it is always a melancholy thing to behold. But nothing is sadder than the burnt-out case – the sudden and comprehensive collapse of morale and will leading to surrendering all that had meant everything previously.
The most tragic example of burn-out in sport that I can remember was that of Bjorn Borg, the great tennis player and Wimbledon champion, who suddenly retired in January, 1983, at the age of 26.What happened to him remains deeply instructive. It shows that beneath the glamour the soul can be destroyed.