Transcript 0:00 Gold, silver, and bronze. Bradbury closest to the fence. Fifth position for the start. Ready. [starting gun fires] Away they go. 0:12 Steven Bradbury was content in his semi to sit at the back, and it looks like he'll do that again just here. As the Koreans There's a saying that luck is where opportunity meets preparation. 0:23 For me, the formula for success is simple: readiness plus opportunity equals success. People will say hard work, but hard work is part of readiness, as is persistence, 0:36 and we must be eternally vigilant for opportunities and always be ready. Steven Bradbury. So Steven Bradbury won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in speed skating, and people said he was lucky. 0:50 And when he got to the semifinal, him and his coach had a look at the field and they thought, "We can't win." So they decided to skate around behind everyone, 1:00 hope someone fell over, get a place, and make it into the final. And that's exactly what happened. They got to the final. They had a look again at the, uh, the names, and they thought, "I can't match them. 1:13 Let's skate around behind. Someone falls over, we might be able to sneak a medal." And as history tells us, everybody fell over about 20 meters from the line, and Steven Bradbury won a gold medal. 1:30 Now, to do a Ba- Bradbury means to be the last one standing when bad luck befalls others. 1:36 And to think that the only reason Steven Bradbury won was because he was lucky, that, that's disrespectful because that disregards the hundreds of thousands of hours Bradbury trained and the sacrifices he made to be ready if an opportunity presented. 1:54 When you look at the gold medal race, you see how close the others were to recovering and how small the winning margin was. 2:03 And Bradbury himself, when he was younger, he slipped in a race, and another skater's skater, skate hit him in the groin, and he almost bled to death on the ice. 2:15 He won that gold medal because he was ready when the opportunity came. And when we're young, there seems to be an abundance of opportunity, so our readiness declines because we feel, "Well, we'll just grab the next one." 2:29 And when success comes early, people begin to expect it, and the foot comes off the pedal. If you want to succeed, you work towards your version of success and wait for the opportunity. 2:41 Sometimes it becomes the hard work you put in to be ready that others see, that convinces them to give you the opportunity. 2:50 And then sometimes what we achieve as we wait for the opportunity to achieve success is success in itself. And many times we don't realize that until we reflect on it as time passes on. 3:05 Stewie Law was a brilliant cricketer from Queensland, and he worked hard to make the Australian Test side as a batter. 3:13 Unfortunately, he played in an era where Australia's six batsmen were players who became legends of the game because they were so successful. 3:22 Law worked hard and was ready, but opportunity never presented itself except for one time when Steve Waugh was injured and Stewie Law was selected for his Test debut. 3:34 When the opportunity presented, he was ready, and Law went out and scored 54 not out on debut in the only time he batted in a Test match. 3:45 Waugh returned for the next match, and Law never played another Test match for Australia. But what he did do, because he was ready, was play 54 One Day Internationals for Australia. 3:56 He captained Queensland to five Sheffield Shield wins and two One Day trophies, making him the most successful captain in Australian domestic cricket. 4:07 Stuart Law is also Queensland's all-time leading run scorer in first-class cricket. He played 13 years in English county cricket, and during that time he met his English wife. 4:20 He was ready when opportunity presented itself. And though not the opportunity he aimed for, because he only played one Test, Stuart Law was successful in so many other ways. 4:34 Back in 1976 when I was a young bloke, there was a movie called Bugsy Malone. 4:38 It was a hit musical, and it was a cast made up of young adolescents, and they played gangsters drinking sarsaparilla in speakeasies and shooting splurge guns, which were basically cream pies. 4:52 And Jodie Foster and Scott Baio were two of the stars, and both of them carved out a long and successful careers in the film and television industry. Another star of the show was Bugsy's girlfriend, Blousey Brown. 5:06 She was played by a 13-year-old Florence, or as her friends called her, Florrie Dugger. Despite no previous acting experience, she was one of 200 children selected for the movie out of 10,000 hopefuls. 5:21 And she was spotted when the Bugsy Malone casting team went to the Air Force base in Bedfordshire in England where her American father was stationed. 5:30 When the cast came together to make the film, it was discovered the girl originally chosen to play Blousey had had a growth spurt. 5:38 And when she stood beside Gru- uh, Baio, she dwarfed him, and the producers were scrambling to find a replacement. Florrie was in the chorus, but had memorized the entire script, and so was offered the part. 5:53 She was ready, and opportunity presented itself. 5:58 But she discovered she enjoyed the acting, the camaraderie, and the joy of memorizing roles.But the demands of premiers and publicity duties turned her off a career in show business. 6:10 She said later she was shy and she was a tomboy. And while she didn't mind the acting, she didn't like the way they kept wanting to dress her up all girly for the publicity material, so she never acted again. 6:22 Five years later, at 18, she enlisted and became a medical administrator and served in the Air Force for the next 20 years. 6:29 So she was ready when opportunity came, but rather than leading to a fulfillment of a dream or goal, she discovered that it wasn't the goal she wanted. Sometimes opportunities come when we simply aren't ready. 6:43 Colonel Harland Sanders got fired from a dozen jobs, and his first restaurant failed and sent him broke. He kept working hard, and when he was ready, an opportunity came, and with his seven secret herbs and spices, 6:57 Kentucky Fried Chicken was launched and is still a success today. If you wanna be successful, what you are going to do today is gonna make sure you are ready when opportunities present. 7:10 Learn something new, be better at something, train hard, meet someone new. Sometimes we have to chase the opportunity and not wait for it to come to us. 7:21 15-year-old Paul McCartney attended a church garden fete in the hope of meeting some girls. 7:27 Then he heard a high school band named The Quarrymen perform, and he was impressed by the sound and asked a mutual friend to introduce him to the band's lead singer, John Lennon. 7:38 McCartney happened to have his guitar with him, and the, he impressed the 17-year-old Lennon with his skills and was invited to join the band, and half of The Beatles was born. 7:49 How many of us wouldn't have asked that question? Don't let the fear of rejection stop you from asking for an opportunity. 7:57 Michael de Vere was an anonymous lower grade rugby league player for St George when he wrote a letter to Brisbane Broncos coach, Wayne Bennett. 8:05 In the letter, he pleaded for a contract, and his passion convinced Bennett to give him a go. Nine seasons later, de Vere left the Broncos as their highest scoring point scorer, and three premierships to his name. 8:19 Succeeding today means doing everything you can to be ready, and not waiting for opportunity to knock on your door, but instead looking for doors you can knock on to create your opportunities. 8:32 Skates a great track, holds the corners tight, but the Chinese skater on the outside... Oh, and that's a lot of contact. Oh, they've all gone down. Bradbury is going to come through and win gold. 8:43 Steven Bradbury from the tail of the field.
