Topics: Psychological Skills Training
Impacted sports: All high-level performers
Researchers: Marcus K. Taylor, Daniel Gould, and Cristina Rolo
Universities: University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and Michigan State University
Olympians: special athletes
With the Winter Olympics currently on in Milan, and with the focus of this newsletter being sport and performance psychology, the question arises: which mental skills separate athletes who earn coveted medals from those who only participate?
Taylor et al. (2008) studied the psychological skill usage of 176 United States Olympians from the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and compared those who earned medals with those who did not.
Which psychological skills did researchers measure?
The Test of Performance Strategies (TOPS; Williams et al., 1999) was used by researchers to understand how athletes manage themselves in two specific environments: practice and competition.
8 key skills
TOPS measures:
Self-talk
Emotional control
Automaticity
Goal setting
Imagery
Activation
Relaxation
Negative thinking (replace with “Attentional control” during practice)
Medalists vs non-medalists: decoding the data
Table taken from Taylor et al. (2008)
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for. What were the psychological skills differences? Let me run through what the table says.
First, medalists employed psychological skills more frequently in practice and competition than those who did not medal.
In competition
Medalists demonstrated significantly higher emotional control and automaticity. In other words, they were better at staying composed, resetting from negatives or mistakes, and performing their skill or sport in a way that felt “automatic” with minimal thinking or thought interference. Interestingly, medalists used imagery behaviors less than non-medalists. More on that in a little bit.
In practice
The biggest differentiator for medalists versus non-medalists was in emotional control and in imagery. Put another way, emotional control seems to be the area where these athletes excelled compared to their non-medalist counterparts.
The imagery difference is actually interesting because again we see non-medalists using imagery more often.
The authors speculated that because medalists reported greater emotional control and automaticity, they may have relied less on imagery to compensate for lack of control or inability to achieve “flow.”
Real world (hypothetical) example from 2026 Winter Olympics
Imagine you’re watching an Olympian—a strong contender for a medal—navigate their first run. They don’t perform their best, making an easy mistake, and instead of resetting and turning their attention to their upcoming runs/attempts, they let their emotions get the best of them, and don’t employ their emotional regulation skills. The result? A sub-par performance. No medal.
Heavy limitations
Before we move into how you can apply this information to help your athletes and performers, it’s important to point out some heavy limitations with this study:
Self-report: these responses were collected post-completion of the games. Athletes who medaled might have been biased to report what worked. Timing and memory should be considered.
Low-response rate: only 30% of Olympians questioned fully returned these surveys. We don’t know how the remaining 70% used psychological skills in training and competition.
Publish date: by now, the data and the research is quite old.
Correlation not causation: you definitely understand this one, but it bears repeating. This study shows that medalists use these skills more often but we can’t say that they caused medals.
Advice to coaches and staff
If you’re a coach, program director, or part of staff, here’s how to apply these findings this week:
Emphasize emotional regulation: since emotional control most strongly differentiated those who earned medals from those who didn’t, it should be a talked-about part of your practice environment. How do your athletes recover from mistakes? How do your athletes navigate setbacks and challenges? Do they have the mental skills to overcome poor performances, reset, and focus in on the task at hand? This skill stood out in competition and practice—so it might be fruitful to pursue it.
Use tools like TOPS: TOPS is but one validated psychological measure which assesses how well athletes respond in practice and competition. You don’t need to administer TOPS tomorrow, but you should know what separates your athletes from each other. Do your “star” athletes have different profiles than your “lower-rung” athletes? Work with mental performance consultants and sport psychologists to find weaknesses in your athletes and build mental skills that will help them succeed in the long-run.
Understand the importance of psychological (mental) skills: psychological skills are useful to help athletes improve their mental performance in competition. Do not ignore this part of training.
Clear takeaway
This study does not prove emotional control causes medals.
But it does suggest that athletes who win medals report stronger emotional regulation in both practice and competition.
If this skill consistently separates medalists from non-medalists, it definitely deserves structured attention in your program.
That’s all for this week.
What did you think of today's brief?
Useful? Join The Performance Psychology Brief to get weekly, actionable sport and performance psychology insights like this.
It took me 8+ hours to read, understand, and compress this paper into this 3-minute insight and visual carousel. If you found it valuable, please share it with a colleague or friend, or share it on LinkedIn and tag me (Malhar Mali)—I’d love to interact and boost.
Reference
Taylor, M. K., Gould, D., & Rolo, C. (2008). Performance strategies of US Olympians in practice and competition. High Ability Studies, 19(1), 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1080/13598130801980281
