A strong beginning can build genuine confidence, but it rarely decides on its own where a person actually ends up finishing. Usain Bolt said exactly this, in his own words, moments after winning the 100 metres final at the London 2012 Olympics in an Olympic record time of 9.63 seconds. "I stopped worrying about the start," Bolt told reporters. "The end is what's important." For Bolt, the words had a very specific meaning tied directly to his own sport. His starts out of the blocks were never really considered his greatest strength, and both he and his own coach knew it, yet he built an extraordinary ability to accelerate through the middle of a race and completely dominate its closing stages instead. The broader lesson underneath all of this, though, reaches a good deal further than athletics, into pretty much any area of life where the beginning of something looks nothing like its eventual ending.
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