Post-Games life not always easy transition for Olympians
The Olympics are over and, while not without some distraction, it has been a pretty darn good performance by Team Canada.
In a short while, our Canadian Paralympians will take on the world with no less fervour. Then it will all be over, and Canadian Olympians and Paralympians will be faced with the question: What happens next?
Some will use South Korea as a launching point for travelling the world for weeks or months. Most Olympians have made their way home by now, greeted at the airport by proud family, friends and appreciative fellow Canadians.
They’ll get home, walk into a familiar room, perhaps sit on the edge of a bed and take a breath. Maybe they’ll cry, maybe not. Either way, they will be afloat: untethered from lives grounded in hours of training, testing protocols, meal planning, injury management. It will feel like they’ve been sucked out into the vacuum of space.
Then the thoughts come: What has this Olympic experience meant to me? Who am I now? Am I really the creation of someone else’s imagination, and is it my job to embody their narrative about me for the rest of my life? If not, where do I go from here?
Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin said, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.” True, it’s not the weight of a medal tugging on their neck that determines an Olympian’s sense of worth — I’ve met enough Olympic medallists to know it’s more complicated than that.
But de Coubertin’s pithy words don’t quite do it either. All Olympians are winners, but these aren’t people who find satisfaction in taking part. They came to conquer something — the podium, their own standards, their fears.
For all Olympians, the journey back down the mountain will take time.
Where other massive investments of time and energy in becoming a professional in one’s field are normally associated with ongoing returns, Olympians have mere days of peak performance. Only a tiny fraction parlay their Olympics participation into motivational speaking careers or lucrative endorsements. But Olympians aren’t complaining. Problem is, many don’t know where to begin. How do you go from being among the best in the world at something to starting over from scratch? It’s this wide chasm that makes the transition particularly challenging. At its worst, the crushing lows that can follow the Olympics have played a factor in athletes taking their own lives.
In 2015, the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees, Sport Canada and the seven Canadian Sport Institutes across the country implemented Game Plan, an athlete wellness and transition program aimed at supporting Canada’s national team athletes in their education, life skills, career and network de- velopment, and mental health.
Nearly three years on, we’re making a difference in athletes’ lives. Many athletes are getting mental-health support, taking advantage of scholarship opportunities made available through our partnership with Smith School of Business, learning workplace skills for the first time with an employer participating in our Game Plan Employer Network, or getting help from one of our athlete advisers — someone to coach them and help them plan the nonsport aspects of their lives.
Despite our progress, I still worry about the subset of lone wolf athletes out there who slip through our net, struggle, and are determined to deal with things quietly on their own.
It’s taken three years to form a coalition among national sport federations, sport institutes, post-secondary education institutions, private sector employers, federal and provincial governments, and corporate partners. There’s so much more to do, and sometimes it feels impossible to manage. But it’s important work.
Maybe our work is about helping these athletes find their next fight, so they can bring the best of themselves forward into the next phase of life. They inspire the country, show us the bounds of human potential, and so we’ll continue building a system of support that allows them to soar and catches them when they fall.