Hubert Ripoll is a psychologist. He has been president of the French Association of Sport Psychology and created the first French laboratory of cognitive psychology applied to sports. He has worked with numerous Olympic champions and world class athletes. For the last 10 years he has led enquiries to advance our understanding of the psychology of sportsmen, artists, scientists. He is a professor at the Faculty of Sports Science at the University of Aix-Marseille, and lives in Paris.
• How do seriously handicapped individuals manage to accomplish exploits that defy the imagination? How do they become "exceptional beings", models to us all, while everything seems to be pitted against them? What is it that pushes them to overcome their physical limitations?
• This is the mystery of these "champions" that Hubert Ripoll attempts to unpack. Is sport the natural home of resilience?
• A product of an enquiry into handicapped athletes, mostly "number ones" at international level, this book not only sets out to understand the methods of resilience in sports but also how it speaks about us, and the way in which these extraordinary beings can help us in our day-to-day life, in our "ordinary" existence.