Serena, Jordan and Manning speak on failure

The bittersweet secret to victory? Gatorade's stable of sports stars would have it that the answers are disappointment and even defeat. A cast of Serena Williams, Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning, J.J. Watt and more sound off in a new commercial in which they alternately guzzle electrolyte-laden sports drinks and speak to what has fueled their careers.

Jordan addresses the fact that he didn't make his high-school varsity basketball team. Peyton recalls going 3-13 in his rookie season as an NFL starting quarterback. Others also emphatically share their lows. As for Williams, she says, "Be on the wrong side of the biggest upset in your sport" – invoking the painful, fairly recent history of her 2015 US Open semifinal loss to Roberta Vinci. That was a time when Williams was two wins away from completing a calendar-year Grand Slam.

That particular feat, the true Slam, hasn't been accomplished since Steffi Graf won the Golden Slam in 1988, seizing all four major singles titles that year and grabbing an Olympic gold to boot. Still, Williams has passed Graf's record of 22 Slams since her famous 2015 New York ouster, and she maintains that she will return in early 2018 to challenge for more.

That's the thing about champions, including all of these. In the most positive light imaginable, they're greedy.

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