At the highest level, athletes are highly skilled, highly trained, and highly proficient machines. Take the 100m sprint for example. All of the athletes in the Olympic final can run sub-ten seconds. They are all fast! But on the day, the deciding factor is often not how fast they are, but rather, how fast they can run under the high pressure circumstances of an Olympic final. The ability to deal with pressure is not about any physical or technical skill, but is more about what goes on between the ears - in other words, it is psychological and about performing with freedom, dealing with distractions, regulating emotions, maintaining self-confidence, and trusting the body's ability to deliver under pressure.