Motivation Quote by Michael East

“Totally unbelievable” is the athlete’s most revealing cliché: not laziness, but a pressure valve. Michael East isn’t offering a polished philosophy of sport; he’s describing the shock of a reality that arrives faster than the mind can metabolize it. Winning Commonwealth gold is supposed to be the clean end-point of a narrative - training, sacrifice, execution. His phrasing rejects that tidy arc. It frames victory as an intrusion, a moment that feels larger than the self who allegedly “earned” it.

The intent is humble, but it’s also strategic. In elite sport, certainty can read as arrogance, and arrogance can harden into a target. “Unbelievable” performs gratitude and disbelief at once, spreading credit outward: to coaches, teammates, luck, timing, the unpredictable churn of a final. It’s a way to honor the magnitude of the event without claiming ownership of it.

The subtext is about scale. The Commonwealth Games are not the Olympics, but for athletes from member nations they carry a distinct symbolic weight: a televised stage, a national story, a medal that becomes shorthand for legitimacy. “Winning” is simple; “Commonwealth gold” is loaded - with funding implications, with selection politics, with the difference between being a promising runner and being a name.

Context matters too: modern athletics is measured to the thousandth, yet careers still hinge on fragile variables - health, lanes, weather, a rival’s form. “Just totally unbelievable” is what you say when you’ve lived that fragility and, for once, it breaks your way.