Foo Can Do It!

So it turns out that triple Olympic champion cyclist Sir Chris Hoy is motivated by the Foo Fighters. The BBC Sports Personality Of The Year (world’s most boring accolade?) 2008 likes nothing more than a bit of Dave Grohl to psyche himself up before dragging on a pair of ludicrously tight lycra Package EnhancersTM and whizzing off round a velodrome as fast as his improbably chunky thighs will allow.

“I’m a big fan of the Foo Fighters and some of their tracks instantly bring you back to the stages of the race.” he told Deadline Scotland, adding, “If you are driving along in your car and you have got the radio on it can be quite weird. You suddenly feel your heart rate soar.”
Car? Radio? No wonder he wins all the cycle races so easily.

Anyway, this music-as-a-motivational-technique thing is hardly a revolutionary concept, but it did make me remember some of the more famous examples of music spurring sportspeeps on to glory.

For instance, Australian swimmer Michael Klim – who won nine career gold medals, including two at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 – was the cover star of the Foo Fighters’ Australian release of ‘There Is Nothing Left To Lose’, owing to the prominent FF tattoo on his left shoulder.

Another gold medal winner from those Olympics is rower Tim Foster, who was part of the Coxless Fours team that included Sir Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell. Foster retired after his Sydney triumph, but has since turned his hand to coaching and is one of the most high profile advocates of using music to motivate sportsbods; using uptempo music during periods of extreme exertion, and slow-tempo songs during ‘recovery periods’ – i.e. a bit of Sigur Ros for when they’re all shagged out.
I even found this incredibly dispassionate sentence critiquing Foster’s work on a fitness website: “Research from Brunel University indicates that this approach increases work output, reduces perceived exertion and improves in-task affect – the pleasure experienced during the activity.”
So there, it’s official; music has a bearing over your “in-task affect”! Thus: sex will always be rubbish unless you’re listening to Metallica.

Wimbledon won the FA Cup in 1988, beating the nailed-on favourites of Liverpool 1-0 at Wembley, aided by their pre-match culture of listening to incredibly loud music on their state-of-the-art ghetto blaster. While notorious England international hard-case Stuart Pearce (who earned the cuddly nickname ‘Psycho’) would listen to the Sex Pistols at a deafening volume before steaming out onto the turf to crunch some legs. Perfect.

Perhaps most oddly though, The Sun reports today that the Ashes-winning England cricket team were spurred on by a song called ‘Time For Heroes’. No, not the famous Libertines rattle, but, in fact, a soaring string-laden anthem by an obscure Northampton band called Juliet The Sun. The paper quotes England fast bowler James Anderson as saying, “Cricketers all like upbeat music before playing and ‘Time for Heroes’ definitely fits the bill.”
However, the England team’s endorsement of an obscure band suddenly makes a bit more sense when you read that Juliet The Sun frontman Steve Crook is a former team-mate of Anderson, Andrew Flintoff and Graeme Swann. Although the best bit is this: Crook is Australian. Gutted!

I wonder if watching cricket would make Dave Grohl a better guitarist…