Only 30% Was Talent: Olympian Megumi Field on Discipline, Goals & Pressure

Genius Born or Made? — Episode 2 Olympian Megumi Field on What Matters More Than Talent Guest: Megumi Field · Host: Himanshu Gupta

This is a lightly corrected transcript of the conversation. Auto-transcription errors (names, proper nouns) have been fixed; the speakers' words have not been rewritten.

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Himanshu Gupta: Welcome back to Genius Born or Made, a show about the invisible routines behind extraordinary performance. Today's guest is Megumi Field, a Paris 2024 Olympic silver medalist in team artistic swimming for Team USA, and currently a student at Stanford University. For me, Megumi is someone who has mastered the art of making hard things look incredibly beautiful. Welcome to the show, Megumi.

Megumi Field: Thank you, thank you for having me.

Himanshu Gupta: Let's start with the question I ask every guest. Genius born or made — in your case, what percentage of your genius was talent you were born with versus environment or coaching you were exposed to early in childhood?

Megumi Field: I think I would say 30 % maybe is what I was born with. I had the long legs and the body of a synchronized swimmer, but synchronized swimmers are technically supposed to be very flexible, and I was just not born with that. So I credit 30 % to having some physique, and the rest completely is up to the discipline, the coaching, and for me, the family that supported me behind it all.

Himanshu Gupta: For our audience, what is synchronized swimming, explained to a layperson?

Megumi Field: Synchronized swimming is a sport where you combine about eight different sports — ballet, gymnastics, cheerleading, a component of water polo with the egg beater, speed swimming, diving — all harnessed into one. You go out there, swim with seven other girls, throw each other into the air, go underwater, run out of breath, and synchronize meticulously tiny movements, all while making it look as effortless and beautiful as possible.

Himanshu Gupta: That sounds incredibly hard — possibly one of the hardest team sports in the world. Let's go back to your childhood. How did you get interested in swimming, and how old were you?

Megumi Field: My mom says I started swimming before I started walking. By the time I was five, swimming back and forth got a little boring. My mom is from Japan and grew up with synchronized swimming being televised, so she knew what it was, unlike in the US. When I told her I was getting bored, she said, why don't you try flipping around? And after that, I just fell in love. I've been flipping ever since.

Himanshu Gupta: If someone watched you train for two hours as a young competitive swimmer, what would shock them?

Megumi Field: In synchronized swimming, what you see is the overall picture — the audience watches a three-minute routine and thinks, wow, that's pretty, and moves on. But for us, we train about eight to ten hours a day working on maybe ten seconds of that routine. I remember one time there was a move where you start in a split and join your legs, and my back leg was slightly bent. My coach said, we're not moving on until your leg is straight. We spent two hours just on that, and at the end my leg still wasn't straight, because I didn't have the flexibility. So when you come home, you reflect — if I'm going to waste valuable pool time on something I can fix on land, then I'd better sit here and do it, and ask my mom to help stretch my knees. You need discipline you can be born with or discipline yourself into having — not just the bare minimum of ten hours a day with your team, but coming home and doing more, and waking up before to do more.

Himanshu Gupta: Did you play other sports as a kid?

Megumi Field: I started with swimming, switched to synchronized swimming at five, and joined gymnastics and ballet on top of speed swimming, just to be as versatile as possible.

Himanshu Gupta: Was there ever a time you almost wanted to quit?

Megumi Field: There's not just one moment — I can count hundreds of times when I was like, I'm done, count me out. But a huge part of it was my family. When I was nine, my family decided to drop everything. I said, I want to pursue this full time, I'm going to the Olympics. So we decided to move from Delaware to California with my two younger sisters and put a hold on life so I could fulfill this. For me, it wasn't the pressure of having my family support me, but acknowledging that these people are willing to do anything for me — being grateful, and realizing I'm not just doing the sport for myself. When it gets to those hard times, you take a step back: what's the bigger picture? It wasn't a negative pressure; they acknowledged how much I wanted it and gave more for it. So even when it sucks and I'm dying and I don't want to go to the pool at 5 a.m., it's like — in ten years, I'm going to be so grateful.

Himanshu Gupta: Not every 10-year-old can tell their family they want to compete at the Olympics. Where did that ambition come from?

Megumi Field: As a family, we grew up watching the Olympics. When I started synchro, I'd watch the Olympic synchronized swimmers and the speed swimmers. At a certain point, around eight, I thought: synchro is such a niche sport and takes so much time to get good at, so if I'm going to do this, I'm going all out, or I'm not. So I asked, what's the highest level? As high as I can go — the Olympics. That's how my goal came out.

Himanshu Gupta: How did the family conversations look between five and ten years old?

Megumi Field: I have two younger sisters, and they weren't whole into the synchro thing. With my parents, I'd express my ambition and how much I wanted it, and they'd be so willing to support it. With my sisters, I learned that just because I love something doesn't mean they have to. So I'd shift the conversation to not be so centered on synchro, and express my love for it in a way they could understand in their own world.

Himanshu Gupta: Can you think of ways your parents acted differently than other parents of 10-year-olds?

Megumi Field: It wasn't just the big move — it was the everyday things. I was in four sports at once, so as soon as school ended it was driving back and forth, plus my two younger sisters doing their own things, plus meal prepping to make sure I had enough food to sustain all that. You don't appreciate it much as a 10-year-old. And they did a great job of pushing me to my limit, but they understood the threshold — they'd push me to a certain point, but they also knew when I was actually breaking down, and then it was, how can we help, how can we solve this?

Himanshu Gupta: How would they push you?

Megumi Field: There was a time I said I wanted this, and my mom said, yeah, but if you're only training three hours, you're not going to get there. And I was like, shoot, that's fair. So she'd drive me to the Y to train on my own and help coach me. You can have big dreams and say you're going to be an Olympian, but if you don't have the initiative to do something about it and take the actions, then it's just a dream. My parents made me realize that.

Himanshu Gupta: How much action is enough action? Until you break down?

Megumi Field: No, I don't think it's until you break down. It's more the principle of going to extra a little bit, even if it's like half an hour. Before school, if school started at eight, I'd be up at six to stretch beforehand. It's not physically exerting yourself to the point of not being able to do more and hating the sport and hating your parents — it's showing that you're willing to do more, and it doesn't have to be a lot. There's a misconception that if you want something, you have to run 20 miles today. You can't consistently do that. It's when you do 10 minutes every day, half an hour every day, a little bit more than you're asked. Doing that consistently is where results show.

Himanshu Gupta: How do you set goals, and how has that changed over time?

Megumi Field: My initial one was going to the Olympics. But as soon as I said it out loud, my parents gave me a reality check — you've got to work hard if you want that — and then I focused on tangible things: making the top 10 for 12-and-unders at national team tryouts, increasing my points by 0.1. That 0.1 seems insignificant, but how am I going to get there? Ten minutes today, ten minutes tomorrow. Sometimes I'd get ahead of myself and make goals six months out. It's great to have the big goal and the medium goal, but you also have to make ten little goals that are completely tangible — so tangible that you'll for sure get them. Maybe my first goal is just, I'm going to get in the water today. You build that confidence and positive energy, and it makes you want to strive to the next one. The next thing you know, you've met the medium goal, then the big goal. So remembering to have the big goal, the medium goal, but also the hundreds of tangible, tiny little things.

Himanshu Gupta: Would you write these down or keep them in your head?

Megumi Field: I went through periods of writing it down, but sometimes writing it down made me mad — like, you seriously have to write down "get in the pool"? Why can't you just do it? So a lot of it was in my head. I'd tell the medium-sized goals to my parents, but the little ones I'd keep to myself.

Himanshu Gupta: There must have been days you couldn't complete a goal. What did your mindset look like then?

Megumi Field: When I was younger, if I didn't complete a little goal, I'd break down — like everything I'd done was a waste. It was a lot of negative self-talk. As I got older, it became more: shoot, you didn't make it, it happens, it sucks. Acknowledge that it sucks, but are you going to sit here and cry about it or get into it? Say my goal was to do an hour on my own, and I stood at the edge of the pool and went home. There's the option of sitting down and being done, and there's the option of, I didn't get in, but I'm going to sit here and even if it's 10 minutes work on my splits. Reevaluating and creating another tinier little goal that you can accomplish — there's like a hundred percent chance you can.

Himanshu Gupta: How would you get out of the negative self-talk loop?

Megumi Field: Sometimes sleeping over it. But if it's 10 a.m., that's a whole day you're wasting. My family would say, snap out of it, Megu. I wasn't the type to love "it's okay, you'll make the goal tomorrow" — I hated that. For me the talk in my head would go from "you suck, you can't do this" to "seriously, let's go." At a certain point I got bored of just sitting there telling myself I suck. So, seriously, get up.

Himanshu Gupta: Tell us about your family background. What do your parents do?

Megumi Field: Neither of my parents did athletics, and neither did their families, so the three of us girls being athletic is the first of it. My mom is a physical therapist, which was great because I could come home and get massages and fix injuries immediately. My dad is an engineer of sorts.

Himanshu Gupta: What would you watch as a family on TV?

Megumi Field: We watched the Winter Olympics as well as the summer. I first fell in love with figure skating. Even if the Olympics happens once every four years, it's the highest level of sports and it's constantly there — there are constantly videos of it. The winter and summer Olympics were like our little movie time, popcorn and all, but I still watched videos of the Olympics every day through my mom's YouTube.

Himanshu Gupta: How did you get the mindset to express yourself to your family — I want to be an Olympian?

Megumi Field: The funny thing is, we rarely expressed ourselves very freely. We were a family that communicated and supported each other, but we weren't the type to sit at dinner and ask, how was your day, how are you feeling? I don't think I ever explicitly said I want to go to the Olympics. But if I'm asking, Mama, can I have your phone to watch this every day, that tells the parent something. So when I said I want to take this seriously, they could connect the dots.

Himanshu Gupta: What's your advice for parents — including me, I have a seven-month-old — to get kids passionate about a sport between one and five?

Megumi Field: I think it's not something you can force. When kids are young, they're experiencing everything. Maybe after experiencing a lot, they gravitate towards one thing — maybe broad, like they love sports or being outdoors, or they have a music sense. I definitely don't think passion is something you can force, because then the kids get burnt out. So it's realizing the broad thing a kid gravitates towards and continuing to nourish that until they find their specific passion and drive.

Himanshu Gupta: As a parent I worry about phones and distractions. That wasn't the case for you growing up.

Megumi Field: We didn't have phones readily available between one and five. The fact that I had to ask my mom to go on the computer and search YouTube — it wasn't something I always had, it was something I had to ask for. Now it's a different generation with digital stuff everywhere. But I think you'll see it in their day-to-day, like if they're kicking around their toys.

Himanshu Gupta: Let's talk about the 70 % that's made. What are the two or three things that let you compete among the top 10 in the world?

Megumi Field: Number one is self-discipline, more than anything. Well, first is passion for what you're doing, and then the self-discipline supports that passion — because if you don't like what you're doing, you're not going to work for it.

Himanshu Gupta: Is there a specific skill you developed that let you differentiate from even excellent synchronized swimmers?

Megumi Field: In synchronized swimming there are so many moves, and when you first enter the sport, kids go straight to the cool, interesting stuff, which makes it fun. But when I got serious, I stopped doing all the cool, interesting, fun stuff, and it was just holding this position for two hours, then doing that for another two hours. It's going back to the basics — the foundation of the sport — and once you have that, you can create whatever you want. So having the foundation really carried me through.

Himanshu Gupta: It's also a team sport. Walk us through the mindset shift to being a team player.

Megumi Field: Being on the team is my favorite part of the sport. Being a team player is about trust, and you get trust with consistency. Like, without consistency, no one trusts you. So when you go into team situations, being a consistent person — who works hard in the pool and at competition, but also in everyday training consistently lightens the mood — people know that's who you are. Then they can trust that's who Megu is, no matter if we're training at a community pool or at the Olympics. There's also a component of putting others before you. Sometimes the team would train ten hours, everyone's dead and wants to go home, but somebody is struggling on one thing and we'd spend extra time because one girl couldn't do it. Putting that person's needs before wanting to go home and relax is a huge component.

Himanshu Gupta: We'll show the audience that moonwalk performance to Michael Jackson. What's the most invisible thing about it that people don't realize?

Megumi Field: In that moonwalk, every count was meticulously planned out. For viewers it's a five-second clip that looks cool and snazzy, but just to remind people what that took — this person has their toe on their ankle when it should be on the middle of their ankle. I would say 150 hours on just that move.

Himanshu Gupta: 150 hours for one move. How did it change things when the clip went viral?

Megumi Field: I don't think it changed my identity at all. What it did do — the US hadn't qualified for the Olympics in team artistic swimming since 2008, and the popularity had been diminishing. Qualifying, getting the silver medal, and then having that viral clip — for the young girls learning to swim or do ballet and seeing that, it increases the popularity of the sport. That's what made all of us so happy to contribute.

Himanshu Gupta: Competing at the Olympics is insane pressure. How did you develop the skill of performing under it?

Megumi Field: I'll speak from a team perspective, because if one of us fails, all of us fail. The year before the Olympics we had two qualifying opportunities, and on the first one we lost it by 0.06 points out of a 300-point routine, which was devastating. After that we had to reflect on why, at the highest pressure, we failed. What we did and took all the way to the Olympics was bringing it back to reality — we called it our bubble. You're warming up at the Olympics and you see China throwing girls in the air, super synchronized, super difficult, and it's easy to feel inferior. So we stopped looking, literally just stopped looking at our competition, because it didn't matter. We either trained as much as we could or we didn't; if it was enough, it was enough. Worrying about other people and factors we hadn't practiced with was just going to ruin our performance. So focus on yourself, trust the process, trust the training. We'd say: are we really going to let a TV in our face or thousands of people watching ruin all of that? We have three minutes. You either do it or you don't.

Himanshu Gupta: Did you watch China's performance before yours?

Megumi Field: No, we didn't watch at all. I only watched it after.

Himanshu Gupta: If a five or six-year-old asked you to coach them, how would you pick who could be trained for synchronized swimming?

Megumi Field: Their love for it. If there's no genuine passion and excitement, especially when they're that young — they get so excited when they love something, and they can't fake it. If you don't have that, then it's hard.

Himanshu Gupta: What would you ask them to do in the first month?

Megumi Field: First, what's the big goal? Write it down, conceptualize it. Then, okay, we're going to do little steps, because it'll take a lot of hard things to get there — little goals and medium goals. And I'd tell them: when you go home and watch TV, just stretch your knee, point your toes — when you're watching TV, eating dinner, studying, going to the bathroom, instead of being flat-footed, be on your toes. Make it a habit to work when you're not working, so you're improving without feeling forced.

Himanshu Gupta: Would that advice change for kids without access to great coaches or pools?

Megumi Field: Growing up, I didn't have access to anything — I was the only synchronized swimmer in Delaware and we weren't financially well off. What my mom instilled in me was doing the little things when you're not training: stretch your toes, stretch your splits, hold planks. Even if you don't have access to anything, you have access to your own body and what you do with it. So multitask and use your time wisely.

Himanshu Gupta: Last question — what's your next goal before the next Olympics?

Megumi Field: This year we have our collegiate season, and a competition in about two weeks. The medium-sized goal is winning the championship, but in two weeks we've got to lock in.

Himanshu Gupta: Good luck — and I'm rooting for Stanford. Thank you so much, Megumi. I'm sure millions of girls and kids around the world will find it inspiring.

Megumi Field: Thank you, thank you.