Olympic blues: What happens when the race is over?

By Rene Ryall

New Zealand Listener·

10 Apr, 2022 05:00 PM11 mins to read

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Chasing an Olympic dream is so all-consuming, many athletes struggle with their mental health in the aftermath of the Games. By Rene Ryall.

For many athletes, going to the Olympics is like climbing a mountain that few have ever tackled. It’s going to be tough, and possibly scary. And if you don’t quite make it to the top, you’re going to be a bit gutted. It takes courage to accept that. That, at least, is how High Performance Sport New

A post-Olympic dip is common, he says. A long-held goal, often a childhood dream, comes at the price of years of hard work and sacrifice. Once the flame is extinguished, athletes can find themselves in darkness.

Olympic rower Eve Macfarlane hit rock bottom after the Rio Olympics in 2016. Perhaps it is another part of the struggle many athletes face, particularly at elite level: how to embody a life and identity outside sport.

"It was never, 'This is Eve. She's a beautiful person'," Macfarlane says. "It was always 'This is Eve. She's a rower'."

Macfarlane and her doubles partner, Zoe Stevenson, went to Rio as world champions, and favourites for gold. When that didn't happen, Macfarlane fell apart. "I remember just absolutely bawling my eyes out behind the grandstand."

Following Rio, she decided to take time out of the sport. She and her life partner moved from Cambridge to Raglan, and at first she revelled in doing all the things she couldn't when she was training. But the post-Olympic blues soon took hold, then spiralled into something much deeper and darker.

"I didn't even want to socialise and go outside. I'd cry all the time. I got really lazy and lethargic, and the biggest warning sign to me was that I didn't want to do the things that I knew that I loved, like going for a surf. I was just not enjoying it at all. And I was like, 'These are beautiful waves. Why am I not enjoying this? What is wrong?'"

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Macfarlane's doctor diagnosed her with mild to severe depression, and from there began the climb. "As athletes, I think we can often be seen as really mentally tough and able to handle anything," she says. "But I think it's a really false sense of identity [placed] on a group of people."

Moving into a tiny off-grid shack during winter shifted something in her mind. "Going back to absolute basics really brought so much satisfaction into my days. I guess just a lot of gratitude for what I do have. It gave a totally different perspective on life."

Macfarlane realised that balance in her life was essential to her happiness. That she was a human before an athlete. Rowing was what she did, not who she was. But she still needed goals to thrive.

After a two-year break, Macfarlane got back in the boat – a very old one – in Raglan Harbour. Another three years later, she was rowing in the women's quadruple sculls at the Tokyo Olympics.

This time, her attitude had shifted. She realised she was doing it because she loved the sport. However, a medal wasn't going to change her life. Her crew placed eighth and although she was disappointed, her head remained above the water. With her awareness of the importance of life balance, she has now retired from professional rowing. But she wants others to benefit from her experience.

To that end, she has co-written a book with Jonathan Nabbs, How We Got Happy, sharing the stories of 20 young people who have overcome depression. And together with Sophie MacKenzie, a rower who also had time out after Rio, she has created a guide for rowers who want to transition out of the sport.

The Olympic dream is like the perfect wedding, says New Zealand sport psychologist and former professional rugby player Zane Winslade. It's assumed it will be the most significant event in a person's life, and huge amounts of time and energy are invested in something that will be over in the blink of an eye.

Except the Olympics is like a wedding on steroids, says Winslade. "All day, every day, it's eating the right things, drinking the right things – or not drinking. Their whole life is based on how you can be faster, higher, stronger or whatever. It's massive."

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Michael Brake, who won gold in the men's rowing eight in Tokyo, says life is different after your pinnacle event. Leading into the Olympics, all your energy is focused on one goal. One way or another it feels good. Then suddenly you go from huge stimulation to nothing.

"Expect to almost come down off it, regardless of the result, and kind of feel a bit shitty. I think that's pretty normal," Brake says. "And that can be kind of confronting if you're not expecting it, and haven't experienced it before. I remember coming off the back of Rio [where the team came sixth], just going into, like, a massive hole after that. Just feeling a bit lost and confused."

Brake says the team did a lot of work around mindset leading into Tokyo, identifying things they wanted versus what they actually needed. The gold medal was something they wanted. "The medal wasn't going to change who we were, and wasn't going to change our values."

It was a liberating concept leading up to the races, he says, and would have acted as a safety net had they not performed.

However, for most people, says Campbell Thompson, it is naturally going to feel better if they come away with a medal, or having achieved or exceeded their performance goal.

Winning Olympic gold is a feeling like no other, Brake confirms. "I just had so many endorphins running through me, I almost felt drunk. Just super, just buzzing."

Max Brown and his teammate, Kurtis Imrie, went into the canoe sprint K2 1000m at Tokyo ranked 15th and with the goal of making the final. For the pair, their focus going into the Olympics was nailing their race plan and focusing on what they could control. Brown says their fifth placing exceeded expectations.

"We were super-stoked because we nailed three races. That was one of the best races we'd ever done. That was our goal. And then on top of that, getting fifth was a huge, huge booster of happiness." For him, there has been no post-event crash.

For some athletes, says Thompson, the post-Olympic blues can be no more than a dip in mood and energy. But others spiral into depression.

In 2018, High Performance Sport NZ found more than 20 per cent of athletes experienced mental health challenges during their time as elite performers. The following year, the International Olympic Committee noted in a statement that mental health issues were prevalent amongst elite athletes.

"If you're defining success purely as winning, then either you win or you feel bad. Either you win or you fail," says Thompson.

Three-time Olympic sprint cyclist Ethan Mitchell says losing brings a wave of emotions. "You ask yourself, 'Where did I go wrong? When should I have made my move? Should I have gone harder here? Should I have not gone harder there?'"

The Rio Games were Mitchell's strongest experience of post-Olympic blues. He was aiming for gold but his team won silver and, at the time, it felt like a disappointment.

He says the post-Olympic period felt strange, going from an environment in which you're in peak physical condition and treated like royalty back to reality and the quietness of a break.

Football Fern Catherine "CJ" Bott says losing at the Olympics is a "bulldozer of crazy emotions". Bott felt she had given her all in her team's final game in Tokyo, which they lost 0-2 to Sweden. Nevertheless, she was disappointed and sad, and it didn't help that one of the women in her team was battling cancer. "It's just crazy that one final whistle does that."

Following Tokyo, her debut Olympics, she had a complete breakdown, she says. When people asked about her experience, she could only manage a rehearsed and superficial response. "No one wants to meet someone who has just been to the biggest sporting event in the world, and then hear them be like, 'Oh, it was all right.'"

In hindsight, she says, it was an incredible experience, but at the time it was overshadowed by the disappointment of the team's performance and the low that followed.

"You come off this huge high of being in the most insane sporting experience of your life, to coming back. And it's just like, 'Oh, it's done.' It's such a strange feeling."

Hammer thrower Lauren Bruce went to her first Olympics in Tokyo planning to be in the finals. When she didn't perform to her expectations, she was devastated. "One of the girls that I'd been training with over there came over to me and was, like, 'It's okay, you're so young and you've got so many of these ahead of you, it's not that big of a deal.' And I just burst into tears." There is a massive build-up, she says. And then it's over.

Both Thompson and Zane Winslade stress how important it is that athletes have a strong sense of self outside of sport, to ensure the highs and lows of competition become a smoother ride. "Ultimately, your satisfaction in yourself as a person resting on a particular sport performance is quite vulnerable, isn't it?" says Thompson.

It's a journey Dylan Schmidt has had to make through two quite different Olympic experiences. Schmidt was New Zealand's first Olympic trampolining competitor in Rio. Before the Games, he says, he didn't think at all about how he would feel afterwards.

"I was pretty disappointed in my performance [he came seventh], and on top of that I had to come back and get straight back into training – I had two more competitions straight away, which I didn't want to compete at."

He also had to resume his university studies. Between exams and training, "I was just over it", he says. "I wanted to take a break and I wasn't allowed."

His experience after Tokyo was a different story, partly because he won bronze and New Zealand's first Olympic gymnastics medal, and partly because he was better prepared for the post-Olympic period. And it was working on an oyster farm after the Games that helped him regain a crucial sense of a life outside sport.

For canoeist Max Brown, that sense of balance and identity comes from studying and teaching music. Cyclist Ethan Mitchell says the break post-Olympics is just as important as the taper (reducing training) before the Games. "Otherwise, your body never recovers and your mind never recovers." Getting to do the normal things in life, such as seeing friends and relaxing, are just as important as training, he says.

For New Zealand's track cyclists, the post-Tokyo period was particularly tough. They not only had to contend with MIQ, but also cope with the tragic death of their teammate Olivia Podmore.

"It was a really, really challenging piece to get on the plane within hours of it happening and to travel home and into MIQ," says Mitchell. "That's probably one of the harder times I've experienced."

Michael Brake says there is a growing awareness of the strain that competing at the highest levels puts on sportspeople's mental health. "I think, even now, we're only just really realising the significance and the importance of putting resources in that area."

High Performance Sport is stepping up and allocating more resources to the issue, he says.

"I think the case recently with Liv, just her whole story in general, goes to show that there needs to be a bit more support, even when people aren't really asking for it." It's a hard one, he says. How do you force someone to open up without them knowing they need to?