A sporting assembly

Encourage children to rethink what’s impossible with this motivational assembly written by Phil Beadle...

Every year, in Australia, some of the most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere run a long distance race. But it isn’t any ordinary distance race. The most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere run all the way from the capital of New South Wales, Sydney to the capital of Victoria, Melbourne. It’s a distance of just under 900 kilometers and takes the very best of the most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere eight days to run it.

In 1983, the most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere were all lined up at the start line – they were young, had massive support teams and were wearing the latest, most expensive trainers and the flashiest, most streamlined running gear – when an old man joined them. Everyone thought he was a spectator who had got lost. He had long blue trousers on, a long sleeved white shirt and an ordinary pairs of shoes that were a little bit scuffed and looked like they would give out.

He was Cliff Young, and he’d decided that he wanted to run against the most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere in the longest race in the world.

Everyone laughed at him. How could a 61-year-old man in an old pair of shoes possibly take part in a race against the youngest, fittest and the best trained? The titters turned to huge, humiliating belly laughs when the gun went off. Cliff could not even run properly. He did a strange one-legged shuffle and limped along as all the other athletes sped off.

Do you know that scientists have found that it’s scientifically impossible for bees to fly? It’s just that bees don’t know it.

Everyone laughed at Cliff. Everyone thought he was a no hoper, a joke and a silly old man. They didn’t know that he had lived all his life on a huge farm and had spent years running hundreds of miles, for days without sleep rounding up sheep.

All the most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere ran for sixteen hours and slept for eight. But Cliff didn’t have a big support team, and had never run a race like this. He didn’t realise that you had to sleep. So, when all the most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere were sleeping in their tents, Cliff was still shuffling along.

By the morning of the second day, reporters were amazed to find that this no hoper, this joke, this silly old man was in the lead. By the morning of the third day, he was further in the lead, and by the end of the fifth day, Cliff had finished and had won the race. All the most brilliant, fittest and most dedicated athletes in the southern hemisphere were over 200 kilometers behind him.

Cliff changed the way that the race was run. No one sleeps on that race any more and it turns out that his one-legged shuffle wasn’t a joke, it was the best way of preserving energy over extreme distances.

Now the lesson is that appearances can be deceptive. You may not have the nicest clothes, or be the most brilliant, fittest, the prettiest or the most popular. But if you have something inside, like Cliff, that no one else has, you can achieve things that no one else can.

What did Cliff’s performance do to the beliefs of the other runners, not for the same race but for the year after?

They had never run the race without sleeping. They had only seen someone else do it and this changed what they believed possible.

When you change what you believe you can change the way you perform.