© Matthew Stockman US figure skater Nathan Chen, a three-time world champion, said knowing he can choose his destiny makes him feel better as an athlete.
Simone Biles gave voice last summer to what many of her fellow Olympians have been dealing with. The external pressures that came with her being the world’s most accomplished gymnast had affected her confidence and her performance. So Biles, who’d been favored to win as many as five gold medals, withdrew from all but one event at the Tokyo Games rather than risk serious injury.
“I didn’t even realize that was an option, what she decided to do,” said US figure skater Nathan Chen, the three-time world champion who believes that what Biles did was “extraordinarily inspirational.”
“I was like, wow, that makes me feel a lot better about who I am as an athlete, knowing that when it comes down to it I can choose my destiny,” Chen said.
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When the Winter Games open in Beijing on Friday, mental health will be a central issue for many of the competitors who endured an exceptionally stressful path to arrive at the starting line.
“We will have a laser focus on mental health and wellness for athletes,” said Bahati Van Pelt, the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s chief of athlete services.
Biles isn’t the only Olympic star who has spoken openly about mental health challenges. Michael Phelps, the fabled swimmer who is by far the most bemedaled athlete in history, talked frankly about his suicidal thoughts. Japanese tennis player Naomi Osaka, who ignited the cauldron at the Tokyo Opening Ceremony, has been fighting anxiety and depression.
“People invalidate it and say, ‘What do you have to be depressed about?’ ” said Olympic figure skating medalist Gracie Gold, who has dealt with depression and an eating disorder. “You are an Olympian, you have all this stuff going for you.”
While pressure to perform is nothing new for Olympians, the stress has been amped up by the omnipresence of social media that puts athletes under a relentless and often merciless spotlight. The ongoing COVID pandemic, which scrambled the qualifying season, required athletes to take exceptional precautions to avoid testing positive, and will force them to live in a “closed loop” at the Games away from family and friends, only worsened the strain.
So the USOPC has done screening of winter athletes around anxiety, depression, eating and sleeping disorders, and alcohol and drug use. The Olympians will have access to mental health services both at the Games and through video technology with professionals at the committee’s Colorado Springs headquarters.
For most athletes the road to Olympus is turbulent under any circumstances.
“The Games are the highest highs and the lowest lows that 99 percent of the athletes are ever going to experience,” said snowboarder Faye Gulini, who’ll be competing in her fourth Games. “The roller coaster is exhausting because a lot of times your success comes at the expense of your teammates’ failure. We’re close friends, so seeing how one athlete is celebrating that they made the team or that they won the Olympics and watching another suffer because they lost their Olympic dream or they didn’t qualify, it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
Few US Olympians had a wilder ride this winter than did luger Chris Mazdzer, the surprise silver medalist in 2018 who had a strong chance to qualify for the Games in three events, watched it go poof on one weekend in Latvia, then received a return ticket when the US was awarded an extra spot.
“I’m not really a the-world-is-against-me person but it was pretty tough the last couple of months,” said Mazdzer, who broke a foot in a preseason training mishap in Russia. “It was like pretty much nothing went my way. But that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be like that. I am always optimistic. My goal is to get to the Games. I’m going to do everything I can. If that’s not enough then that’s not enough. I’m going to give it 100 percent and I’m going to go down swinging.”
Winter athletes are accustomed to the unpredictable nature of snow and ice sports, where medals often are determined by a few hundredths of a second. And their itinerant lives that have them hopscotching across multiple continents also help them develop adaptability and resilience.
“They’re very familiar with being away from support systems, sometimes spouses, kids, in some cases five months of the year,” said Sean McCann, the USOPC’s senior sport psychologist. “So that’s always a challenge. In some ways I would argue our winter athletes are a little bit better prepared. They’re really good with Zoom and FaceTime and every other technological way to get connected with their families.”
Athletes have a variety of ways of handling the stress that comes with competition.
“It’s really important during crazy times of your life like we’re about to have just to remain grounded,” said freestyle skier David Wise, who’ll be gunning for a third straight halfpipe title in Beijing. “My faith is a big part of what grounds me. Spending time in prayer and meditation, having that solitude away from all the distractions and all the noise, is really huge for me.”
Brita Sigourney, another freestyle medalist, relies on yoga and reading. Chen looks to his support group of parents, coaches, and psychologists.
“Really just trust your team, trust the people around you,” he said. “They definitely can see a perspective that you won’t be able to see. I found that helps immensely.”
Yet Olympic athletes still must deal with the weight of expectations, very often their own.
“I think when you’re younger every race seems to be like the best thing ever or the end of the world,” observed cross-country skier Jessie Diggins, whose perfectionism led to an eating disorder.
Winning a breakthrough gold medal at the 2018 Games merely ratcheted up the pressure. “For me it was almost harder after the gold medal,” said Diggins, who’ll be a podium favorite again in Beijing. “I felt everyone was looking at me to keep doing it, flawlessly, forever.”
Olympic figure skaters often feel as though the world literally is looking at them, dissecting everything from their choreography to their costumes to their cosmetics.
“It wasn’t just pressure about doing well, it was about how I looked while I was doing it,” said Gold, a two-time national champion. “Because in figure skating the whole design is to do the hardest things possible while making it look effortless in a small dress in front of millions of people.”
Biles, who won four golds as a teenager at the Rio Games, felt that she was expected to at least match that performance five years later as a 24-year-old. “I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times,” she said on Instagram after the Olympic qualifying round.
Most of her five-ringed peers who’ve felt the same way were grateful for Biles’s candor and courage in opting out to focus on her well-being.
“Whether or not people like to talk about it everyone is dealing with something,” Chen said. “Simone gives all of us hope and comfort knowing that when the time comes we’ve just got to do what’s best for us, whether that’s competing or not competing. That’s the athlete’s call.”
