Being born second is the best way to guarantee finishing first

Winners come second. Or third, even fourth. Just usually not first. I’m talking about birth order: where you fit into the run of your siblings. That’s the takeaway from Mind Games, a new book by Annie Vernon, best known at the Guardian and Observer for a short work placement she did here in 2015, though in the wider world she perhaps has greater fame as a world champion rower who won a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics.

Mind Games sets out to unpick what it is about top‑level athletes that makes them different. For Vernon it’s mostly mental. “You have to be unbelievably, ruthlessly, exceptionally driven,” she writes. It’s the difference between chickens, which is to say most of us, and pigs, who are rare sorts like Vernon. “Think about a plate of bacon and eggs,” she continues, “as the saying goes, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.”

This process starts early in life, really early on. First‑born children are “self-referencing”, Vernon contends, and have to find their own path, make all the mistakes. The siblings that follow, meanwhile, instantly have a target: a rival who is usually stronger and quicker, at least initially, and who gives them someone ultimately to overtake. “Studies suggest that first-born children are motivated to learn while younger siblings are motivated to win,” Vernon notes.

There are tons of examples. Take Mark and, 19 months younger, Jonny Wilkinson crashing around, practising tackling, in the granny annexe of their house in Farnham (at least until they brought down a set of curtains and their mum went postal). Mark would end up being a good rugby player, skilled enough to play professionally for Newcastle, but Jonny would win the World Cup in 2003. “I’d see it in his eyes, how determined he was to win,” said Mark in 2015. “I was never that focused and deep down I knew I was never as good as him. That was the hardest part.”

Serena Williams couldn’t beat her older sister Venus, admittedly no slouch, for years. But when she finally did, she never looked back. Jamie Murray arguably had more potential as a junior than his younger brother ever did – when he was 13, Jamie was world No 2 – but Andy hauled himself to the top through grit and near‑psychotic resilience.

Everywhere you look: Roger Federer has an elder sister who apparently was very good at hockey and volleyball, but is now a nurse in Switzerland; Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent have two elder sisters; Michael Phelps is the youngest of three children; Harry Kane, Rebecca Adlington and Usain Bolt have all taken aim first at elder siblings before moving on to take on and beat the world.

The evidence seems solid – consistent across sports, across countries – and it is backed up by common sense (though, as the youngest of four, I would think that). There is certainly plenty there for any budding Richard Williamses and Earl Woodses (Tiger Woods has three elder half-siblings), parents looking to hothouse their own children and engineer sporting greats of the future, to consider. If you’re really serious about conceiving and raising a star athlete, this information should be allied with research from the University of Essex that found that children (aged 10 to 16) born in October and November performed better on tests of strength, cardiovascular fitness and stamina. These children not only have the advantage of being the oldest in their school year but their mothers would have been bombarded over the summer months with vitamin D, which is believed to be beneficial for bone and muscle growth, while they were in the womb.

So an autumn baby with at least one elder sibling is practically halfway to the Olympics, then. Someone like Annie Vernon, who has an elder brother and the dream birthday: 1 September. She certainly believes it helped her in rowing, though she also points out that it may have resulted in some less desirable characteristics. “For me, it’s always been structured, team sports where it’s competitive and I can compare myself to others,” she writes in Mind Games. “Insecure? Moi?”

There are inevitably exceptions. The one that swims, cycles and runs to mind is Alistair Brownlee, who, after a flirtation with Ironman, announced recently that he plans make a comeback to triathlon for this summer’s Olympics. Brownlee, at the age of 32, wants a third gold medal, and a third victory over his long-suffering kid brother, Jonny, who is two years his junior and won a bronze medal in 2012 and silver in 2016.

By Vernon’s logic, Alistair should have come out of the traps fast but been steadily and inexorably overhauled by a more cut-throat Jonny. This has not happened yet. If you ever meet the Brownlees – which I did before the Olympics in 2012 – the expected roles are essentially reversed. Jonny, a phenomenal athlete by any measure, told me that he did not even consider Alistair a rival. “He is a rival but, at the same time, he’s a teammate and a brother,” he explained.

Jonny went on to recall the 2011 world championships where his brother won and he finished second. “That was great really. That was perfect.”

Alistair, meanwhile, in my 20 years of meeting professional athletes, is perhaps the most single-minded I’ve come across. The story goes that at the Rio Olympics in 2016, when the Brownlee brothers pulled clear of the field, Jonny turned to Alistair and said: “Relax, take it easy.” Alistair took this as his cue to raise the pace. “I just thought: ‘If he’s telling me to relax, he’s probably finding this quite hard,’” Alistair said.

So, all you firstborns out there, take hope. You can achieve sporting immortality, you just have to be a bit more Brownlee. And even if success on the field eludes you, take solace from MIT research from 2017. This found that firstborns typically did better in exams, had higher IQs and ultimately earned more than their younger siblings. They were also less likely (certainly in the case of boys) to be involved in violent crime and general misbehaviour. “The firstborn has role models who are adults,” explained the MIT economist Joseph Doyle. “And the second, later-born children have role models who are slightly irrational two-year-olds.”