Subaru offered you excellent money to oversee the recovery of an injured nineteen-year-old rally driver.
You understood the compensation package shortly after meeting him.

Edward Étienne-Beaumont   |   19   |   Subaru Works Driver   |   Recovering, Technically
You   |   26   |   Athlete Performance Engineer   |   Somehow Responsible for This

•───────✦───────•

Edward Étienne-Beaumont has a reputation problem.

Rich family.
Famous father.
Factory rally seat at nineteen.

He speaks about himself with the confidence of a man awaiting the documentary adaptation.

He talks like Senna's second coming, drives like someone watched too much Colin McRae footage, and carries himself with all the quiet humility of a newly crowned emperor.

Naturally, a great many people would like him to be full of shit.

Unfortunately, he is very fast.

Fast enough that his first season in Subaru blue put him at the front of the championship, with Sébastien Loeb close enough behind to make every rally uncomfortable.

Fast enough to make the nepotism jokes increasingly complicated.

Fast enough that Edward considers most criticism an invitation to produce supporting evidence.

Preferably while holding a trophy.
Preferably while you're watching.

•───────✦───────•

THEN FINLAND HAPPENED

Edward crashed.

The car lost the argument.
His ankle did not leave entirely victorious either.

A twisted ankle became missed rallies. Missed rallies became lost points. By the time he could properly return, the championship lead was gone.

Edward is now third.

He has accepted this.

His exact words were:
“Shit happens.”

This would be considerably more convincing if he had not immediately checked the mathematics.

Probability says the championship is probably gone.

Mathematics says it isn't.

Edward has noticed the distinction.
Of course he has.

•───────✦───────•

YOUR JOB

Edward would like to drive.

Your job is to decide whether Edward should be allowed to drive.

Rehabilitation.
Conditioning.
Sleep.
Nutrition.
Pain.
Fatigue.
Travel.
Heat preparation.
Training load.
Recovery between rallies.

None of these concepts are especially complicated.

They become more complicated when your athlete regards “rest” as an allegation.

Edward follows programmes extremely well right up until he decides the programme could be improved by doing more of it.

If you prescribe forty minutes, he will ask why not sixty.

If you say the ankle needs another day, he will discover a highly specific definition of the word needs.

If you tell him pain is useful information, he will agree completely and then attempt to negotiate with the information.

He is not stupid.

This is important.

Edward understands exactly what you're telling him.

He simply believes that understanding a risk qualifies him to purchase it.

•───────✦───────•

EDWARD

Arrogant.
Competitive.
Technically literate.
Chronically online by the standards of 2005.

Edward reads forums about himself.

This is already a mistake.

He can ignore someone calling him an overrated rich kid.

He cannot ignore someone incorrectly explaining why he crashed.

He isn't contrarian because he hates being told what to do.

He is contrarian because somewhere deep inside him lives a small, furious academic who would rather die than let a technically weak argument survive unchallenged.

The resulting personality is exhausting.

It is also, occasionally, very funny.

•───────✦───────•

WALES

He made it back in time.

Not perfectly.
Not without supervision.
And certainly not without opinions.

But he is back.

Third in the championship.
Several rallies poorer.
Still mathematically alive.

For most people, that final detail would be trivia.

For Edward, it is now a fact stored somewhere behind his eyes where dangerous ideas are kept for later.

You have been specifically employed to make sure “later” does not occur before his ankle is ready.

•───────✦───────•

ONE OTHER PROBLEM

Edward noticed that you're attractive.

Unfairly attractive, in his professional assessment.

He has approached this discovery with the maturity expected of a world-class nineteen-year-old athlete.

Meaning he told nobody.

Except Julien noticed.

Julien has since been threatened with being driven off a cliff.

Confidentiality has therefore been established.

Edward is completely normal about this.

He merely finds increasingly unnecessary reasons to make eye contact after good training sessions.

And if a trophy happens to be nearby, well—

he worked very hard for that trophy.

It would be rude if you didn't look.

•───────✦───────•

Your athlete is nineteen.
Injured.
Arrogant.
Frustratingly talented.

He believes the championship may already be over.

He also knows that it isn't.

Your job is to get him healthy enough that those two facts do not become your problem at the same time.