Some relationship exists between personality and sport performance, but it is far from perfect.
That is, although personality traits and states can help predict sport behavior and success, they are not precise. Few could argue the importance of motivation to train for any competitive sport. This is a specially true when male and female athletes choose a sport requiring in excess of twenty hours of solo training in cold, often dark environment. X-C skiers often train alone or in the small groups, away from the spot light, with high intensity and long duration. While there seems to be a little agreement among scholars and coaches as to the nature of motivation, they all agree that motivation is critical to the success of all athletes.