The Sporting Link

The author’s imagination then took flight. Was not the boxer the forerunner of hundreds of thousands of other sportsmen and women who, since then, have accelerated their performances to an extent greater than in any previous period in history? Of course, training techniques had improved, as had athletes’ diets, medical procedures, and that prime incentive, money, but—he asked himself—could their employment of “memory” in this way also be a factor in the dramatic improvement in performances over almost the entire range of sports? The fact that film and video usage in sports reporting has been around for about the same amount of time—and that most top sportsmen and women routinely use the medium to examine their own and each other’s performances—seemed not coincidental. There had to be a relationship between historical awareness and decision-making perspicacity. Thus began a quarter-century inquiry into how employers could capture and, importantly, apply their own prior knowledge and experience in a business environment where the memory of a job-for-life was as rare as the proverbial hen’s tooth.