He was running and jumping in to a sand pit in his back garden at the age of four. I have read his auto-biography and probably know even more about him than you do. He was ‘bold’ from the age of four, five or six, is what I meant. I didn’t mean that he suddenly got the idea as an adult, to try both events. i eman he was bold enough and self-believing enough even as a young child to know exactly what path he wanted. But his path was very focused. By the time of his high school years, he got a tape measure, and measured 8.90 meters in his back garden, just to see what it looked like. he also sowed the numbers: “27 feet” or something on the back of his jacket which he wore to school every day. when classmates asked him what it meant, he told them he’d be the high school kid that would jump over 27 feet in the long jump. Nobody believed he’d do it, but himself.
For you to suggest he discovered his talent, and was “allready” this and that is wrong, because no matter how good he was in his teens, he’d allways planned everything before-hand, long before he started prooving it on the field. I’d say he was bold, the epitomy of “reaching goals” is Carl Lewis. He’s not the ‘fell out of the womb and broke the junior record’ kind of athlete. He was just very driven. He was running and jumping in to a sand pit at age four, and actually visualizing the track & field version of the long jump.
He was bold all his life, which is why he became a very good jumper early on in his life. He didn’t discover his talent by “accident” as so many other sprinters claim of their own talents. Carl was driven, his elder brothers and sisters were more athletic than he was (for a while) and his parents were ofcourse, track coaches. Eventually, after 12 years of training, he starting getting very good, by the time he was 16 years old.