Think about listening to a crowd of roaring followers each time you make an look. Hundreds of digital camera flashes observe your each transfer. Every second of your life taken up with preparation on your large second: coaching, performing, media interviews and picture shoots. Then think about going again to your day by day life once more – acclimatising to the on a regular basis mundanity of payments, returning to your day job and resuming family chores.
What occurs when the crowds cease screaming and it’s a must to cope with the shift again to odd life?
When the Olympic Games finishes on August 11, these of us who’ve been watching the joy—and presumably skilled vicarious satisfaction—may expertise a way of vacancy. However it’s nothing in comparison with the void Olympic many athletes will expertise within the aftermath of the video games.
For athletes returning house from the Olympic Games, their journey is normally accompanied by a radical change in setting and appreciable bodily and psychological shifts. A distinct local weather, sights and smells and the dearth of excited echoes in anticipation-filled arenas. Abruptly the hype surrounding an athlete’s efficiency diminishes and their intense coaching schedule reverts to regular as their our bodies get better.
For athletes, the build-up to the Olympic Video games is a four-year cycle, demanding big private {and professional} sacrifices and bringing with it an unlimited quantity of strain.
The occasion itself is an expertise of sensory overload—the large crowds and deafening noise. Add to that the strain of acting on the worldwide stage and —for a fortnight a minimum of—the celebrity status that comes with being an Olympic athlete.
Some athletes thrive in such an setting, notably on home turf. However for others, it may be a nightmare experience.
Even veteran Olympic athletes, akin to US gymnast and 11 instances Olympic medallist Simone Biles and former US swimmer Michael Phelps—essentially the most profitable and most adorned swimmer of all time—have opened up about their post-Olympic blues.
Trying again, Phelps stated in Could 2024: “2004 was my first style of post-Olympic despair, you recognize, coming off such a excessive.” Nile Wilson, British creative gymnast and Olympic bronze medallist has spoken publicly about his expertise of Olympic comedown.
“Comedown” is a time period normally related to withdrawal from stimulant medication. However the emotions skilled by athletes are usually not so completely different. The excessive athletes get from their sport has been linked to the release of the hormone adrenaline. The Olympic comedown is a response to the “excessive” that’s skilled from the discharge of adrenaline in the course of the video games.
Adrenaline habit is usually related to extreme sport contributors however studies have shown that addictive issues – together with alcohol, medication and playing – can have an effect on athletes throughout a spread of sports activities.
Success can change into like a drug to elite athletes. And, sadly, for some the “excessive” from profitable and a focus could also be changed with different addictions as soon as the competitors is over. Athletes report feeling like “rock stars” – one skilled wrestler commented that “there’s no better drug” than their sport.
Extended media consideration can delay a bout of post-Olympic blues however for a lot of athletes retiring from elite sport altogether, this transition from feeling like a celeb to changing into a daily particular person once more can current a major danger to their psychological well being and wellbeing. Changing the sporting expertise with one thing constructive can be a challenge.
Dealing with post-event blues
Many athletes have a robust however slender sense of identification—what they do is a large a part of who they’re. As soon as athletes return from the Olympic video games, they might expertise an existential crisis, asking themselves “what now?”, or “what does all this imply?”
However this doesn’t need to be a destructive expertise. Research have demonstrated that when athletes cease their sport it may be a possibility for reflection, clarification of values, and a seek for alternative ways of living.
Making ready the thoughts and physique to wind down for one’s well being is simply as necessary as psyching as much as carry out. A 2022 study reported that this form of preparation and athlete assist remains to be missing.
Days earlier than 800m runner Keely Hodgkinson gained a gold medal in Paris 2024, she opened up about experiencing despair after coming second and “solely” profitable a silver 4 years earlier on the Tokyo Video games, saying: “I didn’t realise Olympic comedown was truly a giant factor.”
Put up-event slumps don’t simply have an effect on Olympians, although. We are able to all expertise despair after an extended build-up to an necessary life occasion. Whereas the next coping methods have been recommended by elite sportspeople to assist different athletes beat back post-competition despair, they could possibly be useful for anybody making an attempt to navigate our means by the blues after a giant occasion.
Step one is to just accept that you recognize the aim is completed, then take day without work to get pleasure from and have a good time what you will have achieved. Replicate on what went nicely, what didn’t go so nicely and what you loved. Most significantly, make a listing of the pleasurable stuff you missed out on whereas making ready for the occasion—so possibly going to the flicks, having extra free time to commit to hobbies, family and friends, or going to the seaside. Then, throughout your day without work after the occasion, make an effort to go and do these issues.
Filling your life with significant actions after a giant occasion can assist all of us to cope with comedown—whether or not we’re Olympic rockstars or extra odd people.
Helen Owton is a lecturer in sport and health on the College of Wellbeing, Training and Language Research, The Open College Faculty of Training, Childhood, Youth & Sport at The Open University.
This text is republished from The Conversation beneath a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.
