Alberto Uncini Manganelli interviewed 22 of the greatest athletes alive—Usain Bolt, José Mourinho, and others. What they revealed about sacrifice, grit, and the will to keep going challenges almost everything we assume about greatness.
The version of a champion most of us know is a highlight reel. The podium. The medal. The breathless post-race interview. Alberto Uncini Manganelli has spent years studying the version that never makes it to camera.
An executive who built his career at the highest levels of global sport—including a senior role at adidas Worldwide—Manganelli had unusual access: not to athletes at their peak, but to champions willing to speak honestly about what it actually took to get there. His book, Formula of Formulas, draws on 22 of those conversations, and the portrait that emerges is less glamorous, and far more instructive, than the one we usually see.
“I found it surprising to see how all of them had to face adversities that put their self-belief to the test,” he says. “We don’t see enough of that. We don’t understand how many sacrifices and choices they had to make, how much discipline they had to follow, just to achieve what they achieved.”
The Difference Between Grit and Stubbornness
One of the more clarifying moves Manganelli makes is drawing a clean line between two qualities that are almost universally confused: grit and stubbornness. From the outside, they look nearly identical. From the inside, they are opposites.
Stubbornness, he explains, is rooted in ego. “Stubborn people refuse to acquire new information, refuse to listen. They build their own world of conviction based on selective data, and sometimes that flows into manipulative behavior and a complete disconnect from reality.” It is persistence in service of the self.
Grit has a different center of gravity entirely. “Grit is focused on the outcome. It doesn’t protect the path—it protects the goal. It’s fundamentally driven by values and beliefs.” A gritty person will abandon their approach a hundred times over. What they will not do is abandon the destination.
The practical consequences of confusing the two are significant. Coaches reward pig-headedness thinking they’re seeing determination. Organizations mistake genuine conviction for inflexibility. Manganelli has watched both errors unfold, and neither is cheap.
“Talent without work ethic will not go very far when the normal level of your competition is exceptional people.”
Why the Almost-Champions Never Quite Made It
Sports history is littered with extraordinary athletes who reached the upper levels and stalled there. Manganelli has spent considerable time thinking about what separates them from the 22 champions he interviewed, and his conclusion is less about raw ability than about how people are oriented toward their goals.
“At a level where everyone is incredibly talented, talent alone cannot bring you first to the finish line.”
What the champions he spoke with shared was something closer to obsession—a commitment to their vision so total that immediate rewards simply didn’t compete. “They could always prioritize their highest goal above any instant gratification, which implies a level of conviction on your mission that goes way above any effort or sacrifice, with consistency and persistence over time.”
On the talent question specifically, all 22 converged on the same answer: talent opens doors, especially early, when the competition is broad. But as the field narrows and the level rises, work ethic becomes the only variable that still moves the needle. Talent gets you into the room. It doesn’t keep you there.
Pressure Isn’t the Problem
Manganelli makes a point that tends to make people uncomfortable: the highest levels of competition are not for everyone, and that is not a character flaw. It is simply an honest reckoning with what elite pressure actually demands.
“We’re entering a loop of acceptance that anything destabilizing a stable emotion is wrong or harmful. Sport teaches us otherwise—every day. To win, to lose, to continuously handle those emotions.” The champions he studied didn’t learn to eliminate pressure. They expanded their capacity to absorb it. “Every race exposes a load of pressure. The higher the level, the higher the pressure. It’s tough to be at the tip.”
For those who genuinely want to compete at that altitude—in sport, in business, in any high-stakes arena—the reframe he offers is both liberating and demanding: pressure isn’t a problem to be solved. It is proof that you’ve earned the right to be there.
“If you really believe in something or badly want something, you need to have the courage to try. And again. And again. With all the consequences it takes.”
Can Grit Be Built?
Manganelli won’t accept the either/or framing of whether grit is innate or developed. Some of it, he concedes, is there from the beginning—children reveal early on whether they run toward difficulty or away from it. But that’s only part of the story.
Purpose, he argues, is grit’s most reliable builder. When genuine passion takes hold—when something moves from interest to preoccupation—the internal conditions for perseverance emerge on their own. “From passion to obsession is a quick move,” he says, “and those create the conditions to push you forward whatever and whenever the circumstances.”
The role of support systems is equally underappreciated. None of the champions he interviewed developed their resilience in a vacuum. Families, coaches, teammates, and partners who kept affirming that the difficulty was real and the effort was worth it—these weren’t peripheral to the story of individual will. They were structural to it.
He also offers something rarely said in conversations about grit: timing is real, and it matters. Passion and drive don’t always arrive on schedule. Life moves in seasons. “I do not believe it’s sustainable to expect that passion and motivation switch on and off on demand. So yes, we drive the vast majority of events—but we also need to learn how to let them go.”
Across all 22 conversations, though, one thread held constant—the simplest and most demanding instruction of all. Believe it’s possible. Find the courage to try. And if it doesn’t work, try again. “Because everything is possible,” he says, “if you really want it.”
