Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

news

Ronnie O'Sullivan counters Wiggo's suggestion that Victoria Pendleton is "a bit of a milkshake"

Snooker player defends Pendleton’s use of sports psychologist Steve Peters

Victoria Pendleton has received support from an unlikely quarter in the form of “Rocket” Ronnie O’Sullivan. The snooker player has defended Pendleton’s reliance on sports psychologist Steve Peters during her career following Sir Bradley Wiggins’ comment last month that the former track sprinter is “a bit of a milkshake.”

While distancing himself from Team Sky’s ‘marginal gains’ philosophy, Wiggins also denounced “the whole chimp thing” – a reference to Dr Steve Peters’ book, The Chimp Paradox, which outlines many of his theories on managing one’s emotions in a sporting context.

Told that Pendleton had said she could never have won all her medals without Peters’ input, Wiggins added: “But Vicky’s a bit of a milkshake anyway. You can overanalyse things but at the end of the day, it’s about your ability and whether you’re a better athlete than the other person or not. Whether you’ve come to grips with this other person living inside you, it’s all a bit… well, each to his own. That may work with some people, but as Roy Keane would say: it’s utter nonsense.”

O’Sullivan, who has also worked with Peters, felt that was a simplistic assessment.

"I don’t think Vicky Pendleton’s a milkshake,” he told Eurosport. “She’s a fierce competitor. She just probably didn’t relish the high expectations that she put on herself."

O’Sullivan’s ability has never really been in doubt, but his attitude to competition has seen him repeatedly threaten to retire and he sees Pendleton as having had a similar relationship with cycling.

“For someone like Vicky Pendleton, who I would say is a little bit more like me, we kind of could never deal with the big occasion that well, the build-up. We’d always put a lot of pressure on ourselves to have to do well and have to win and that would kind of get so strong, that feeling, that you’d get to the point where you’d think ‘I don’t even want to be here now, because I’m not enjoying it’.

“I don’t think Bradley had that kind of make-up that me and Vicky Pendleton had. I think Vicky Pendleton was more like me where her emotions would get the better of her and she’d think ‘I want to be anywhere but here’.

"So, I kind of get what Bradley was saying, but me personally, speaking from my experience, I wouldn’t be the player I am today without Steve Peters and Vicky Pendleton probably wouldn’t have won the Olympic medals or whatever without Steve Peters.

“I think I needed Steve and he’s made me the player I am today. But then there’s some people that might not need Steve Peters and maybe Bradley Wiggins is one of them that doesn’t need it.”

However, he then somewhat mischievously went on to suggest that even Wiggins could perhaps have benefited had he given Peters more of a chance.

"Bradley’s got his own way of doing things and it’s worked for him… but maybe if he’d have had Steve Peters in his corner he would probably have taken on the Chris Froome challenge a little bit more.”

O’Sullivan said he thought that was what everybody had wanted to see.

“They wanted to see Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome go head-to-head – now that would have been a rivalry. In my opinion if he’d have had Steve Peters in his corner maybe he could have taken that challenge on."

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

Add new comment

15 comments

Avatar
tritecommentbot | 6 years ago
1 like

//i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/574/237/26f.jpg)

Avatar
FluffyKittenofT... | 6 years ago
0 likes

I've previously been informed that milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard, and that Daniel Day-Lewis got rich by drinking other people's. Now it seems they also win prizes for riding bicycles. Is there anything they can't do?

Avatar
Skylark | 6 years ago
1 like

I regularly shop at Iceland. Their Milkshake consists of god know what. Probably liquid polymer. That leaves it something to be desired..

Avatar
jumbo469 | 6 years ago
0 likes

If it helped Vicky achieve more then that's fine, it's far better than what some other cyclists use to improve their performance....... we're not robots,  we're humans. Roy Keane was my hero......

Avatar
WolfieSmith | 6 years ago
3 likes

... and quoting Roy Keane as the font of all mental well being...? It's easy to pretend post results but in rosy retirement Wiggin's is forgetting just how mentally fragile he was between 2010 and 2012.

Avatar
Jackson | 6 years ago
2 likes

I agree with Ronnie, it's funny Wiggins having a pop at needing a psychologist when he admits in his book he nearly went home from the 2012 TdF in a sulk because Froome was better than him. Maybe he would have needed to focus more on the mental side of things if he didn't have the confidence of knowing he was full of steroids and racing against guys who weren't.

Avatar
Nixster | 6 years ago
11 likes

If Pendleton is a milkshake does that make Wiggo half a bitter shandy?

Avatar
Velovoyeur | 6 years ago
3 likes

Everyone is different. If it works for you, great. If it doesn't, so what? 

Avatar
BehindTheBikesheds | 6 years ago
2 likes

Human beings are inherrantly faulty, have self doubts and when under pressure default to bad habits/processes/our 'natural' instinct or way of thinking. it takes years of being in certain environments to change to become different but can all come undone in a fleeting moment. You see it in everyday situations but also in sport where top athletes have meltdowns sometimes of epic proportions.
Sports psychologists work with individuals (mostly) not just to get them thinking about how they can achieve x but to explore what might hold them back at crucial moments, be able to address those self doubts and potential underlying problems and plenty more besides.
Rugby union and athletics are quite goid at using PS, you set mini goals for smaller periods of time/effort and try to attain those goals resetting after each.
What has gone has gone, you can't change that but you can change what you achieve in the next mini target/goal so you reset, reset ypur gocus on your targets and act out what you know you can do, often visualising the actions.
In rugby it can be make x tackles/hit ups in x minutes focusing on completion andwhat your tasks/job Iis within the team.
In such a physically demanding sport that in league particularly were play is much more continuous (than union) it's difficult to keep that focus/goal resetting, that's why it's not just ever (or shouldn't be) a one off thing. Like training your skill/improving athletic ability, training your mind to deal with x scenario as near to 'robotic' fashion doesn't happen overnight.
Coaches can be particularly sceptical, in rugby league that I know of no-one uses them (PS) in the Northern Hemisphere at least yet when you wqtch how players dismantle in matches and make mistakes you'd associate with schoolkids that's not just physical fatigue but mental fatigue/lack of mental strength and not coping with the pressure.
Some people have an innate ability to deal with these things themselves but they are very few and far between, often these people come from hard or dysfunctional backgrounds where they had to cope with a lot of shit as kids.

Avatar
Dr_Lex | 6 years ago
3 likes

Meh; what does Ronnie Pickering think? 

Avatar
beezus fufoon | 6 years ago
0 likes

where there's no sense, there's no feeling

Avatar
psychonabike | 6 years ago
0 likes

Steve Peters is a Psychiatrist. He may have employed psychological theories and techniques as some of the basis of his approach, but he's a paid up member of the royal college of Psychiatrists. 

Avatar
mike the bike replied to psychonabike | 6 years ago
2 likes

psychonabike wrote:

Steve Peters is a Psychiatrist. He may have employed psychological theories and techniques as some of the basis of his approach, but he's a paid up member of the royal college of Psychiatrists. 

 

Psychiatrist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, analyst, life-coach, I'd love a job where there are no right and wrong answers.

Avatar
Alf0nse replied to mike the bike | 6 years ago
7 likes

mike the bike wrote:

psychonabike wrote:

Steve Peters is a Psychiatrist. He may have employed psychological theories and techniques as some of the basis of his approach, but he's a paid up member of the royal college of Psychiatrists. 

 

Psychiatrist, psychologist, psychoanalyst, analyst, life-coach, I'd love a job where there are no right and wrong answers.

Excluding "life coach" you are talking about qualified professionals where the wrong answer or question can result in suicide. For example....

 

 

Avatar
nortonpdj replied to psychonabike | 6 years ago
1 like

psychonabike wrote:

Steve Peters is a Psychiatrist. He may have employed psychological theories and techniques as some of the basis of his approach, but he's a paid up member of the royal college of Psychiatrists. 

Trick cyclist.

Latest Comments