Parenting & Family Quote by Daley Thompson

“For kids it’s natural to be competitive” lands like a shrug from someone who spent his life being measured, timed, and ranked. Coming from Daley Thompson - a decathlete whose greatness was built on turning every event into a personal referendum - the line quietly normalizes competition not as a taught behavior but as a default setting. That’s the intent: to strip away adult handwringing and present rivalry as biology, not ideology.

The subtext is more pointed. If competitiveness is “natural,” then the adults trying to sand it down - in the name of teamwork, kindness, or self-esteem - start to look like they’re fighting the wrong battle. Thompson isn’t necessarily praising cutthroat behavior; he’s defending the impulse to test yourself against others, to crave a scoreboard, to want a winner. It’s an athlete’s rebuke to the culture of participation trophies before you even have to mention them.

Context matters here: Thompson’s era and sport rewarded people who treated pressure as fuel. The decathlon is basically competitive restlessness institutionalized - ten events, two days, no hiding. So when he talks about kids, he’s also talking about the psychological raw material champions are made from: the kid who races to the door, who wants to be first, who keeps count. The line works because it frames competition as play’s shadow twin - not a corruption of childhood innocence, but one of its engines.