Repetitive exercise routines, lonely training camps and financial insecurity all combine to put pressure on athletes' mental health, writes JOANNE HUNT
AL PACINO'S dressing room pep talk in the sports film Any Given Sundaywas all about putting life and limb on the line to win. But with an increasing number of athletes falling foul of the pressure, it's clear it's not just the body that takes a battering.
With gruelling and repetitive exercise routines, lonely training camps, a restrictive lifestyle and financial security depending on performance, it’s little wonder an athlete’s mental health is also stretched.
Trying to explain the adulterous affairs that nearly cost him his career, Tiger Woods admitted in 2010 that as the best golfer on the planet, “I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply . . . I felt I was entitled.”
Closer to home, the autobiography of Irish boxer and Olympic medallist Kenny Egan tells another tale of elite sport gone wrong – snorting cocaine, visiting brothels because of the boredom of the Irish training camp and a struggle with alcohol, Egan recalls it took him “18 years to get to the top, but just two years to come off the ladder and hit rock bottom”.
Last month, Olympic marathon runner and five-time Irish champion Martin Fagan became the latest casualty. Injecting himself with a performance-enhancing drug “to get back to normal”, he said his darkest and loneliest days at his Arizona training camp were spent searching suicide chat forums on the internet.
“The very thing that makes you a great athlete can also make you vulnerable,” says Lucy Moore, a clinical psychologist, athletics coach and a former international heptathlon competitor.
She says the drive and perfectionism required to be the best means that for many sports people, their sport is all there is.
“If somebody puts an overemphasis on one area of their life, it can cause difficulty,” says Moore. “Because if all your eggs are in one basket and a few get broken, it can have a huge effect on you as a person.”
With a life centred around, “getting that extra 0.1 per cent”, such singular focus can be a risk, she says.
“Let’s say you get injured – your whole sense of yourself, your whole wellbeing, your whole feeling of adequacy as a person, your whole happiness can be so tied up with the results you’re getting from your sport – if that’s not going well for you, there may not be a whole lot of other stuff going for you in your life.”
Brendan Hackett, a sports psychologist and former international athletics coach, says there’s no question that it’s a very pressurised lifestyle.
“For full-time international sports people, their day is abnormal. It is essentially centred around the training session and waiting for the next training session,” he says.
“The athlete’s sole focus is themselves and their body, and when you are doing that level of training, every knock, every cough and every strain is something that is amplified.”
While attention is given to honing technique, perfecting strides or knocking milliseconds off the clock, Hackett says it’s in dealing with emotions that many athletes go off track.
“Everything in sport comes down to measurables, but what the athlete feels isn’t measurable. Emotions aren’t measurable and loneliness isn’t measurable,” he says.
And with the hopes of family, friends, coaches and even country resting on their shoulders, it can be hard to speak out.
“For many, talking is a sign of weakness . . . but if you ignore a strong emotion for long enough, it bites you. You are driven to do something and it’s only then the emotion gets attention.”
Performance manager Liam Moggan, who has worked with world champions and Olympians, thinks that what’s missing from the training schedules of our top athletes is both the time and the guidance to reflect.
“They need to think about their own vision and their values, and why they want to go where they are going. If you look at a lot of our sailors, swimmers or athletes, their families have committed a huge amount to them, and we gain nationally too if they do well,” he says.
“But put yourself in the mind of an athlete who is beginning to have some doubts. They look back over their shoulder and see a mam and dad who may have remortgaged a house, brothers and sisters who didn’t go to university because the athlete was being funded – they get to a situation where it’s very difficult to say, ‘I want to stop’.”
With an athlete’s income tied to performance, Moggan says many just can’t afford to lose.
“A lot of supports we put in the system are for when people are doing well. The supports for people when they are not doing well are very poor,” he says.
Hackett agrees. “When someone gets injured, that’s a time when they are at their most vulnerable. They are given medical support, but they are more or less forgotten about until they are fit again.
“I know a lot of athletes on grants who don’t have a feeling of assurance. It’s that insecurity that really sabotages elite sports people. They live very insecure lives.”
Moore says that if an athlete gets €12,000 a year, they’re doing well. “Most people in athletics don’t earn big money and many people are really struggling to survive . . . so finances, of course, are a huge thing,” she says.
Becoming a full-time sports person is something Moore encourages young people to look long and hard at.
“You put a lot of stuff on hold – your peers will be qualified, earning money and settling down before you. If you are a woman, you will probably put having children on hold. There is a huge amount of sacrifice involved.”
However, she believes the mental health issues experienced by sports people reflect those in the general population and says there are supports in place to help those in trouble.
“I think there are pathways through which people can obtain support. Some of the responsibility is with the government bodies and within the national governing bodies of each sport, but there is also a responsibility on the athlete to reach out,” she says.
For Hackett, frustration and anger are feelings sportspeople need more help to deal with.
“People wonder why sports people get into all sorts of bother around sex scandals or recreational drugs, but emotions underpin that behaviour,” he says. “Their behaviour might well appear irrational, but there’s always something underpinning it.”
