By way of a quick recap, I previously told how my father cruelly abandoned me as a child in a forest, while threatening starvation and abandonment if I didn’t pass the herculean test he had set me.

While that certainly could be one interpretation, another one could be that he set me on a path to future success.

Now I am fond of a good quote. And hailing from a military and sporting background I’ve been surrounded and immersed in good quotes and poor platitudes for a lifetime. But a good quote really can make its mark. So here’s one from Winston:

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”.

You can teach someone the skills needed to be successful, but fathers generally don’t teach their children to fail. Certainly, my father never made me face the Kobayashi Maru scenario (nerd moment). Luckily life will provide that lesson over and over again and it's learning to cope with failure, learn from it and remain driven which can make you as a person.

At age 53 I’ve got a large back catalogue of failures to draw from, so I’ll pick a few to list.

A levels in 1989, Royal Marine recruit training 1990, 1st Royal Naval promotional exam 1991, Commonwealth Games 2018, Field Gun competition (remember the thing that cost me my leg…ouch) 1999, World Indoor Rowing Championships 2018, British Para Powerlifting
Championships 2020, British Powerlifting Championships 2022, European and World Powerlifting Championships 2023.

Now that’s just a small smattering of failures and believe me it’s nowhere near exhaustive, these are just more memorable than others. The one I will pick is my disastrous Commonwealth Games debut in 2018.

Since 2015, I had been training hard, first for the Invictus Games, which I left on a high having won 4 medals.

By 2017, I had been selected to represent Wales as a para powerlifter
and won the Crash B World Championships. I was competing internationally as a lifter, and I had been earmarked for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

My plan for 2018 was going well and I kept it simple, go to Alexandria and defend my indoor rowing world title before heading to Boston for the CRASH-B, win a hammer, then come home and finish getting ready to go to the Commonwealth Games in Australia, produce a PB lift.…well, that was the plan.

2018 had other ideas. A bench press training session in the UK ended with a trapped facet joint that led to thoracic outlet syndrome that all but paralysed my ability to press a weight.

I could still row but it was far from pretty. I went to Alexandria and gave it my best, but I was beaten in the closing meters by the terrific Milan Lackovic. On a stopover in New York during a gym session my arm collapsed trying to press a dumbbell. Foolishly I tried to keep hold of
the dumbbell and promptly tore my right-side erector spinae.

Now I’ve got a knackered right arm, and I can barely walk. I had to climb up the stairs of our Airbnb on all fours. A few days later, topped up on painkillers and caffeine I won my hammer.

If the world champs had not been the week before and the CRASH-B field stronger, that wouldn’t have been the case. By May things had not improved. I flew to Australia knowing I was not going to do well but at
45 years old I may never get the chance again and I was going and going to do my best.

I had trained as much as I could, I had acupuncture, sports massage, physiotherapy, heat therapy and ice baths. Nothing helped.

At the Commonwealth Games, I had the embarrassment of having to write down the lowest first-attempt weight of all the lifters. I then had the embarrassment of failing that light weight on all three of my attempts in front of the spectators, television viewers, teammates and my wife.

Even though I had tried my absolute best I had failed.

Although I knew coming in that this was a possibility, it still hurt.
I went and found a dark corner and had a cry to myself for 10 minutes.

When I came out of the corner, I dried my eyes, my wife hugged and kissed me, and my friends put a beer in my hand. I had failed hugely in 2018. But I wasn’t dead, failure hadn’t killed me, and I had time to make amends to myself.

As today's rambling comes to an end, I’m looking for a way to finish.

I’m going to say that 2018 wasn’t a good year. But last night my wife finished her final training session before flying to represent England at
the Commonwealth championships (proud husband/coach moment) and in between her sets I found myself setting a new 100m erg world record (tbc) and I remembered another of Churchill’s quotes:

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that
counts.”

In short, never ever give in, you’ll amaze yourself.