Chambers knew somebody who learnt all 27,000 words of Ernest Hemingway’s short novel The Old Man and the Sea using this technique. “He didn’t know the story, he just memorised it as a sequence of words. Another guy learnt the whole dictionary doing the same thing. It sounds like a lot of “locations” to come up with, but think of all the places you’ve ever lived, be it houses or whole towns – you’ve easily been to thousands of places.”
To make the information stick, he says, you generally “need to review the information five times, with intervals between, then it’ll stick in your long-term memory.” Otherwise it could expire after the period in which you need it – say, after an exam in the morning, or at the end of a two-week Olympics.
“I don’t know what Clare Balding’s doing, but it could easily be a memory palace technique for short-term, new information, and that’s underscored by her long-term memory for the particular sports she’s always been interested in and passionate about,” Chambers adds. “It’s obviously working well.”
There are, of course, a few external supports. BBC Sport’s research team, who divide the action up and brief presenters before a broadcast (a similarly intense training session would happen for political presenters on election night), then constantly feed facts and figures in during the programme, are invaluable.
An earpiece, and the iPad that rests on Balding’s lap or desk throughout, are there to relay those messages. The tablet is also useful should she need to quickly Google a world record she’s not quite sure of.
And sometimes, it’s simply reams of old-fashioned paper notes that are best. Particularly if the weather’s not on-side. The formidably versatile BBC commentator Andrew Cotter shared a video yesterday of his rain-soaked position for the opening ceremony on Friday. Aside from a small monitor showing the mechanical horses and Lady Gaga, his desk was a mass of papers.
Balding’s sometimes similarly nested in paper notes, but more often than not, she’s simply reeling off information as if it’s second nature. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s just world-class cramming. Once a head girl, always a head girl.
