how top athletes can slow down time

With the new Formula 1 season is about to begin, it’s worth pondering what makes a great racing driver. There are no doubt several important qualities, such as calmness under pressure, the courage to take risks, quick reflexes and excellent coordination.

But there is a more obscure ability that may separate the best drivers – and other top athletes – from the rest: the ability to “slow down” time.

In 1994, a British racing driver named Mark Hughes had “one of the greatest days” of his life when he began a race right at the back of the grid, with 25 other cars in front of him. Somehow he managed to overtake 23 cars, finishing third. While driving, Hughes felt a strange sense of detachment, as if he was watching from outside his body. He also felt a peculiar sense of timelessness.

As he told the author Clyde Brolin for his book In the Zone (2017): “It’s funny and it sounds weird but it felt unconnected to time … It’s not really time … You felt you could go back, analyse and have a look”.

Many racing drivers have reported similar experiences. In another Brolin book, Overdrive (2010), Finnish driver Mika Häkkinen reported that, when driving at his best, “Everything becomes like slow motion — even though you’re going at unbelievable speed around the Monaco track.”

The Scottish driver Jackie Stewart, who competed in Formula 1 during the 1960s and 70s, told Brolin that this skill is an essential prerequisite for success in racing. “At 195 mph, you should still have a very clear vision, almost in slow motion, of going through that corner — so that you have time to brake, time to line the car up, time to recognise the amount of drift.”

Time expansion experiences, as I refer to them in my research, are common in other sports too. The American sprinter Steve Williams — who equalled the men’s 100- and 200-metre world records in the 1970s — described to me how, when he was running well, “10 seconds seems like 60. Time switches to slow motion.”

Many players of ball games report moments of time-slowing too. In my research, a man described a game of table tennis that suddenly “turned into slow motion … I could see the ball and its flight and spin perfectly, anticipating its precise bounce, and position my body, arm, hands and wrist to hit perfect returns”.

I also cite the experience of an ice hockey player for whom “the play which seemed to last for about 10 minutes all occurred in the space of about eight seconds”.

A lucky few

In my book, Time Expansion Experiences (2024), I suggest that only a tiny proportion of extraordinary athletes have easy access to time expansion experiences.

One example is the baseball player Ted Williams, whose career ran from 1939 to 1960. Williams is usually regarded as one of the greatest hitters (if not the best) ever. He claimed to be able to see the stitches on the seam of the ball as it flew toward him at 100 mph. He described how the ball sometimes appeared to grow, so that it seemed like a beach ball floating toward him in slow motion.

This may also be true of Lionel Messi, often described as the best footballer of his generation. Some scientists believe that Messi may experience anomalous neurological processing that slows down his perception of time. This would account for his “impossible” goals that seem to defy the laws of physics.

Explaining time expansion

How can this extraordinary ability be explained scientifically? We don’t really know for sure yet.

There is some evidence that physical exercise generally slows down time. In a recent study, 33 cyclists were asked to estimate the duration of trials, and believed that more time had passed than it actually had. Perhaps this effect is more pronounced for higher level athletes, because of their higher levels of fitness and stamina.

However, this wouldn’t explain why certain sportspeople, such as Messi or Williams, have a more pronounced ability to slow down time than other, equally fit peers. In 2016, a group of German scientists suggested that they may be able to “buy time” due to superior motor skills that allow their “predictive brains to make better use of time than other players to read the games and plan ahead”.

My own explanation is slightly different. I believe the key to understanding time expansion is through altered states of consciousness. Our normal time perception is linked to our usual state of consciousness. In some mildly altered states (such as being in a state of flow) time passes very quickly. But during intense, altered states, time usually expands dramatically, or seems to disappear altogether.

This may be why radical time expansion is a common feature of psychedelic drugs, and of accidents and emergencies. The sudden shock of an accident may disrupt our normal psychological processes and functions, causing an abrupt shift in consciousness.

In sport, intense altered states are due to what I call “super-absorption.” Absorption normally makes time pass faster, as in flow. However, when it becomes especially intense, over a long period of sustained concentration, the opposite occurs. In some cases, an athlete builds up concentration gradually over the course of a game or contest. A racing driver or a golfer may concentrate hard for hours, eventually attaining a state of intense absorption.

Here the game is akin to a meditation, in which a person gradually focuses their mind, attaining deeper states of stillness and well-being. In other cases, an athlete shifts quickly into super-absorption during a critical period of a game — for example, when they (or their team) are losing and making a concerted effort to catch up or in the final minutes of a game when scores are tied or close.

Although many factors contribute to success in sports, perhaps the key to extraordinary ability is the capacity to enter an altered state of consciousness through intense absorption. And the most important feature of this altered state is time expansion.