Commonwealth Games 2022: Badminton player Kirsty Gilmour's letter to her 16-year-old self
Now the real journey begins. In a few years, you will be raging at having a middle seat for a 15-hour journey but you won't bat an eyelid. You're just buzzing to be there. Plus, the athlete to your right is some kind of big deal, apparently. Eilidh Child? I wonder if she ever made it?
Now that Delhi has rattled past in a glorious tornado of colour, you'll have found your feet a little. Or so you think. Let me tell you about Glasgow 2014... This naivety will be both the absolute best thing as it will protect you from so much, and also the absolute worst thing as it will affect your performance. But you'll learn some monumental lessons. They'll hurt, but you'll be glad they happened.
But here's the thing. You'll think you're amazing, that you've got the job done. You are the last Scot standing and while your team-mates are out "decompressing", you spend the rest of the day and night scrolling Twitter.There will be hundreds of variations of that. And, hey, who doesn't want to read that? I get it. But it's detrimental to your performance in the final the next day. You relax too much and the fire is gone.
You're 23 now. You own a house, and you've been to an Olympics. You've been round the block once or twice but these Games are going to require you to draw on every single bit of that experience. The badminton squad will quickly earn the reputation of the team that sit out in the sun too much. And it's fair. We play a year-round indoor sport. We have pasty legs and a Vitamin D deficiency. Let us have this!
This is where the lesson from four years ago in Glasgow comes in. Your best friend today will be Simon. You know Simon. Tall guy, calming influence? You've been working on psychology together for the last three years? That's him!
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