Like I suspect many people in this country, over the last week I have become something of a fan of the winter sport of curling, which has been taking place at the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which finished yesterday.

Curling isn’t really played in England as far as I know, but I know that it’s very popular in Scotland, where most ice rinks have a curling rink. If you don’t know anything about curling it’s a bit like bowls on ice: the team has try to slide its stones (very heavy smooth granite boulders, which apparently cost £10,000 for a set) as close as possible to a bullseye at the other end of the rink, while also knocking your opponents’ stones out of the way.  As well as the person who slides the stone, each team also has two sweepers, who sweep the ice in front of their (and their opponents’) stone, to speed it up and get it closer to the target (or further away from it if it’s your opponents’).

In the early hours of yesterday morning the Great Britain women’s curling team won the Olympic gold medal, beating Japan in the final. This was Great Britain’s only gold medal at the Beijing Games, although the men’s team won Silver in the same sport.

Reading a bit more about the team I was really interested to learn about the team’s “skip” or captain, Eve Muirhead. This was Eve’s fourth Olympics and she finally achieved the coveted gold medal, having lost two semi finals in the past. Understandably, after so much disappointment over the years, she was quite emotional on the podium when she received her medal and the British national anthem was played - for the only time in this Olympics. It was brilliant to see all that resilience and perseverance finally pay off.

Over half term I also watched the excellent documentary Shane, which is about the legendary Australian cricketer Shane Warne. Now I thought I knew pretty much everything about him: he was an exceptional leg spin bowler, who took an incredible 708 wickets in test matches and was voted one of the five Cricketers of the 20^th Century. He comes across, and his achievements suggest that he was, someone to whom success came pretty easily. What I didn’t know, however, was that cricket was by no means Warne’s first love as a sport: as a boy and young man he was an Australian Rules Football player and had set his heart on being a professional in that sport. Cricket didn’t feature much in his life at all at that stage. However, there came a moment when he was released by his club and realised, as he says in the documentary that he simply “wasn’t good enough” to make it. Now at this point most people would probably give up their dream of playing professional sport and settle for a safer, less risky option. However, Shane took up cricket seriously and quickly went through the ranks of club and grade cricket, quickly ending up a test cricketer for Australia.

What do Eve Muirhead the curling Olympic champion and Shane Warne the cricket hero have in common? Two sports with little in common, perhaps, but what they both demonstrate is the ability to bounce back from disappointment and find a way to win and achieve their dreams. Did they fail? No: for them FAIL stood for First Attempt In Learning. Not winning, not achieving their dream was merely a temporary setback which fired them up to work even harder – in Shane Warne’s case involving a rethink of the exact nature of the dream, as he switched sport from Australian Rules to cricket – and ultimately achieve their goals.

We all have setbacks in life: there are very few people for whom success comes effortlessly. What matters is how we respond to disappointment: do we see FAIL as the end of the road and simply throw in the towel and give up, or do we see it as a First Attempt in Learning and merely part of a process towards success, a temporary setback from which we can learn for next time?

I’ve said this many times before, but not all of you will have heard it, and for those of you who have, perhaps it bears repeating. One of the most important things that I want you to leave this school with is an inner belief that you can achieve anything. “Why not me?” Why shouldn’t it be me who wins that gold medal, plays for his or her country at sport, gets that coveted university place or place on a graduate scheme, sets up that start-up or charity; who knows, becomes Prime Minister or President of your home country? Why not me? But to achieve your dreams you can’t sit back and wait for things to happen to you or be done for you: you must put yourself out of your comfort zone – take up a new instrument, join a new activity (even start one up yourself), go along to that Oxbridge session to have a listen. Be your own toughest critic; don’t let yourself off too easily. At the end of every day you should be able to look yourself in the mirror, ask yourself the question “what I have done today which will move me a little closer to my goals?” and be able to answer it positively. Of course, you may well not know yet what are your dreams, and that’s fine of course, but you need to try things in order to discover what your passions are, and what you don’t enjoy.

So – let’s not hear any talk of “I can’t” unless followed by the word “yet” or FAIL, other than as an acronym for First Attempt In Learning.  

Joe Smith, Head Master