The School of Sport: Lydia Williams and the virtue of vulnerability

The Minefield

Athletes would seem to be the embodiments of strength, discipline, autonomy, self-reliance. Of all people, we would expect them to be invulnerable to the moments of self-doubt and weakness that afflict the rest of us.

And yet, particularly after serious injuries or during long periods of convalescence and rehabilitation, many athletes experience intensified forms of the vulnerability — the dependency upon others, the dis-ability, even — that are essential to the human condition.

So what can the experience of physical limitation on the part of elite athletes tell us about what Alasdair MacIntyre calls “the virtues of acknowledged dependence”?