The Greg Cackett Column is a new series from the BEAA and Greg, a three-time Olympic bobsledder and freelance writer, who has been published by the BBC and the Sunday Times. With an irreverent and lighthearted style, Greg will be digging into what goes beyond athlete identity and, in the first edition, he shares his experience of trying stand up comedy for the first time and the benefits of exploring outside of your sporting sphere.

Welcome to the G.C column! Sadly, not Gemma Collins. I know, I’m disappointed too.

It’s an amazing honour to be able to speak directly to my people. Athletes. Elite athletes I should add, because what’s the point of being an athlete if you can’t say that you’re elite? I’m a bobsledder, we’re elite at pushing for five seconds then sitting down whilst someone else drives. Basically, elite passenger princesses.

Come to think of it, what’s the point of doing anything unless you can say you’re elite? That’s our mentality in a nutshell, isn’t it? Though I often wonder how useful it is to us.

The phrase ‘sometimes maybe good, sometimes maybe s**t’ comes to mind.

Post Olympic or Paralympic feels are strange. Lots of you will relate. Particularly those coming to the end of their career or those nursing a devastating setback, read: ya didn’t win a medal.  

The title of this article dives straight into something I’ve been up to since getting home.

Stand-up comedy. Oof.

Now I applied all the necessary emotional insurances to that endeavour by publicly stating that ‘I don’t want to be a stand-up comedian, this is just a skill to help me with comedy writing and performing yadayada’.

The truth is: I don’t know if it’s what I want to do or not! I’m keeping my options open. Swiping through opportunities like career Tinder.

I went for stand-up, mainly because I’m a growth-seeker. I force myself to do scary stuff because as the saying goes, ‘everything you want is on the other side of fear’. Fear of what others think, what you think, what failure might look like, what success might look like.

Happily, stand-up comedy was oddly familiar! Standing alone in a pub basement with three people staring silently back at me felt like being on a bobsleigh start line.

I don’t want this to be a blah of, ‘here’s what I’m doing’, but more a ‘why I’m doing it’ and why it should matter to those still in the high-performance hamster wheel.

Positive contrarians will say, ‘life’s long don’t put pressure on yourself’ and that’s great. In my opinion, life feels short for athletes. Mainly because we live in quadrennials:

-       Games end.

-       Year one of next quad starts,

-       Month or so downtime,

-       Training blocks restart- treat self to new white trainers,

-       Competitions restart- new trainers no longer white,

-       Build to a peak, do major champs,

Rinse. Repeat.

Before you’ve had time to fold your favourite Team GB ¼ zip, three years have passed and the next Games is months away when the last one feels like yesterday.

Olympic cycles move too quickly to spend them hiding.

Whilst sport is a privileged bubble many never get to experience, it can blinker us to the wider world - and to the gifts we might possess outside the athletic arena.

On the one hand, striving in that narrow way is why we do it right? To not live in regret? To look back at the one time in our lives our bodies could do these amazing things and know that we gave it everything until ‘til the wheels fell off.

But when it does finish, for better or worse, you need something else. And I’m not banging the ‘you need a fallback’ saucepan, cue eye roll from every athlete in their early to mid-twenties. I didn’t want to hear that back then. Not when I was laser-focused on improving performance.

I’m saying: find something else that stokes your fire and chase it relentlessly.

Don’t underestimate how prepared you are for this.

Thick skins have been developed since you started sport. We’re critiqued every single day by coaches, physios, psychs, training partners, that random bloke on Insta. We learn not to take criticism personally, but see it as essential software updates making ourselves the best versions we can be.

Creatives in any field know feedback is important but still find themselves mortally wounded by criticism. I love being savaged though! And contrary to the rumours my teammate Taylor Lawrence started, it’s not because I have a humiliation kink.

It’s because I am aggressively aware that honest feedback and the ability to absorb and implement are critical to growth. Physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual - you name it.

Writing and creativity lights my fire, keeps me accountable, competitive, still striving for the next Olympus.

Your talents lie far beyond your body, in a mind you must be resilient enough to show the world.

What was I thinking trying stand up? I was stoking my fire.

I hope you find yours.