Richard Dunwoody's Blog by Richard_Dunwoody

It was interesting to read in the Mail On Sunday that Jessica Ennis admits that her battle for Olympic Gold in London next year will be won as much in her head as on the track. The 24-year-old World and European heptathlon champion is apparently turning to sports psychology to gain an edge over rivals who believe they are gaining an edge on her. I’m not sure what she will gain out of it, given that she studied psychology at university. But if any athlete feels they will get the motivation they need from talking things through, then hats off to them. You do what works for you. I was one of the first jockeys to embrace sports psychology and at the time, there were a few raised eyebrows in the weighing room. But I found that it worked and while it is still not common practice, you do find more jockeys seeking a similar insight.

The 1993-94 season was the best and worst of times for me. By the end of it, I would have 197 winners , my second success in the jockeys’ championship and my second Grand National winner. But to beat Adrian Maguire (see piccie below) to the title, I would have to demand more of myself than I had ever done in my life. The battle was a very long, drawn-out struggle. Long hours were spent in saunas in a bid to keep my weight unnaturally low and it really affected my energy levels. Trainer Martin Pipe’s horses were not running well at the start of the season and my marriage was also breaking down. By the end of October 1993, well adrift of Adrian in the championship, I was not in a good place. What could I do to improve my performance? “What about talking to a sports psychologist?” asked Michael Caulfield, a good friend who was, at the time, Chief Executive of the Professional Jockeys Association and is now, indeed, also a leading sports psychologist.

He put me in touch with Peter Terry, who had worked with all kinds of sportsmen. We met at Bisham Abbey and his first assessment of my character was interesting. Apparently I was compulsive, a perfectionist with intropunitive tendencies. In other words, I needed to punish myself if I didn’t live up to my own expectations. This intropunitive factor caused me to be hard driving and self-critical. A lot of what you are told by sports psychologists is common sense. Personally, I needed to focus on what I was doing, rather than worry constantly about what Adrian Maguire was doing. Control the controllable. It helped that someone was just telling me things like they were to my face. I needed to change and it opened my eyes to the fact. So I hope that Jessica Ennis finds that edge she craves. Just talking things through and getting a few things off your chest can sometimes work wonders. Success is certainly as much in the mind as it is in the body.

Although I have been retired for just over 10 years now, I still try to keep my fitness levels up. I must run somewhere between 25 to 30 miles a week and I also do a bit of work in the gym one or two days a week. Unlike my unnaturally low 10st riding weight in 1993 (I was only really comfortable at about 10st 10lb), my weight is now settled at around 12st. Although open to offers, I’m not in training for any particular challenge at the moment. But I love to keep fit. There’s nothing like a long run to make you feel good. It is a stress-buster. It is never easy to get started. A journalist pal of mine did manage to get into a tracksuit for the first time in five years the other day, but, as yet, he’s still not managed to get out of the front door for a run. Once you get started, no matter how tentative you may be about it, I can guarantee that you will feel better about yourself, even if you may ache for a few days afterwards.

It always helps to have a little motivation, so I'm sponsoring my mate to complete a 10-mile run during the summer – he’s got six months to get fit, so there will be no excuses! As far as food goes, I usually eat pretty much anything and everything. I still like the odd drink, but for some reason I have increasingly started to cut bread out of my diet. There is no particular reason for it. It can make me feel a bit lethargic, but perhaps that’s a mental thing. Either way, bakeries are not for me at the moment. I am heading up to Chester later this week to give a motivational speech to Rentokil on ‘How to succeed and keep succeeding’, and despite the gloomy weather, my mood has been helped by Arsenal’s victory in the semi-final of the League Cup. Hopefully, a Wembley appearance will be the first of many, having not won any silverware for the past five years, although I’m sure Birmingham City will have something to say about that on February 27.