In What have we learned about the brain from the Athletic Phenoms? Part 1 of a 3-part story, we observed that the once-in-a-generation “phenoms” who emerge in the sports world have early-life commonalities that suggest something about our acquired intelligence. In that post, we looked at the legendary athletic performance of Pelé, the soccer superstar who gained world-wide celebrity through his super-human performance. Of significance, was not the fact that he was a superstar, but that his performance was head and shoulders above all others, playing above the soccer pitch in what he had described as an unconscious mental state.
In this post, we examine another phenom, Wayne Gretzky, who was to hockey what Pelé had been to soccer. Both of these athletes had similarities in their early years and demonstrated an unconscious “flow state” during their times of unprecedented athletic performance.
Wayne Douglas Gretzky was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada on January 26, 1961 to Walter and Phyllis Gretzky. In Empowerment: The Competitive Edge in Sports, Business and Life, Gene Landrum describes Wayne’s early life:
Wayne began skating at age two on the frozen Nith River that flowed through his grandparents’ farm. However, it was on the backyard ice rink built by his father, Walter Gretzky, where he honed the skills that led him to the National Hockey League (NHL). …Direct access to the Wally Coliseum through the back door at 42 Varadi Avenue enabled young Wayne to live his first winters on skates, eat his meals without removing his skates, and return to the ice without missing a shot. A backyard light, supported by another in the neighbor’s yard, extended the ice time into the late evening. Plastic Javex bleach containers served as pylons around which Wayne could skate with the puck to develop his stick-handling skills. Wally Coliseum seemed to be the focal point of Varadi Avenue where all the neighborhood boys acted out their fantasies of playing in the NHL and winning the Stanley Cup before millions of cheering fans. Canadians have always embraced hockey as part of their identity and hockey superstars as their royalty.
As Wayne Gretzky entered junior hockey, it became increasingly evident that he was exceptional. Sportswriters attributed his outstanding goal scoring to exceptional skating and stick-handling skills. However, most of these sports writers overlooked what really made Gretzky “The Great One”: it was not physical, but mental. Peter Gzowski, a writer who had been a close acquaintance of Wayne’s from early in the hockey star’s career, wrote about his research-based theory on what made Gretzky exceptional (Total Gretzky, p. 10):
At the core of my discoveries…was the realization that what set Wayne apart from his peers, and indeed, perhaps even from the dominant players who had preceded him, was not his physical gifts…and not even his visual talents–or not as we usually understand that phrase. Instead, his mastery was a matter of perception…Where most players saw an assortment of individuals, both teammates and opponents, Wayne saw situations…[Like a grand master of chess], Wayne was a grand master of hockey: one glance around and his mind told him not only where people were but what they were likely to do next. That’s why, I figured from my studies, he always made so many passes to apparently open spaces only to have a teammate suddenly appear in position to gather them in.
What Gzowski described was a holistic perspective that enabled Wayne to anticipate the moves of his teammates and opponents. Reflecting on what made Gretzky special, Orr and Tracz of the University of Toronto observed (p. 38):
It often appeared as if he had been dropped on the ice from another planet; he seemed to just know what was happening, and likely to happen, on the ice at all times. It made him seem supernatural, with powers of anticipation that no other player possessed.
While most agreed that Wayne Gretzky’s supremacy was somehow associated with his surreal ability to anticipate the play, the action and the opportunities while in the midst of the fray, most assumed this ability was a genetic gift. However, Wayne’s father begged to differ, explaining (Total Gretzky, p. 20):
People say you can’t teach anticipation. I’m not so sure. I used to get them out on the ice and I’d shoot the puck down the boards toward a corner and I’d say, “Chase that.” Well, they’d go right into the end after it. Then I’d say, “Wait, watch me.” I’d shoot it in again, and let it roll around the net. Instead of following it around the boards I’d cut across to where it was rolling. “There,” I’d say. “You’ve got to know where it’s going to go.”
Wayne himself gave evidence supporting his father’s assertion (Orr and Tracz, p. 38):
My dad drilled into me nonstop not to go where the puck is now but to where it was going to be, just to think quickly about the situation in front of me and what the guy with the puck is likely to do with it. That was befuddling at first because, like all kids, I wanted to chase the puck, get it and hang on to it. But he never eased up on encouraging me to try to read the play and react to what was most likely to happen.
I know his insistence about it helped me later on. Driving home after games we had watched or I had played in, he would grill me about specific plays and get me to tell him what every player on the ice had done. We did that over and over until I could analyze just about every play in a game and where players were and where they should have been.
Through his career in hockey, Wayne Gretzky has provided us with excitement and entertainment. In the process, he has changed the way the game is played and the way it is seen and interpreted. Biographer Steve Dryden opined (p. 23):
It was in his brilliant location passes, his sense of players yet to arrive–perhaps anticipating their role in the larger play long before they themselves did–that he changed, forever, the manner in which this evolving game is played.
In essence, Gretzky’s power was his ability to play within himself and above the ice. It was his prescient sense–of where to go and when–that coaches call anticipation. Psychologists call it holistic thinking and a sense of the gestalt.
In Part 3 of this 3-part series, we will look at yet another phenom who was able to marshal unconscious mental powers to perform at a level well beyond all his competitors. We will then draw together these three cases to see a pattern that suggests the origins of such outstanding cognitive abilities.
