Retirement like a deflating balloon for medal-winning boxer
Hot air balloons and sport. A combination you wouldn’t usually expect. But for Kiwi boxer Alexis Pritchard, it makes perfect sense.
The now-retired Commonwealth Games bronze medallist has revealed since the Gold Coast event, she’s been suffering from what she calls “post-Games depression”.
“Dishes weren’t getting washed. Clothes weren’t getting folded. By me anyway. My husband had to do all of that.”
And it’s affected areas beyond just her home life.
“My biggest struggles have really been with exercise. I went from training 12 or 13 times a week to, if I was getting to yoga once a week, then that was a big win.”
And unlike in the ring, Pritchard was caught off-guard.
“After the Commonwealth Games, I didn’t necessarily think I would’ve had that come-down again, because I believed I’d succeeded. I’d won a medal.
“But it happened. I’ve had this massive low for the last few months now. November seems like the time of change, though.”
Pritchard views it as similar to when you get in a hot air balloon.
“You get the call to be named in the team and so you get in the basket. You rise. You arrive in the village. You rise. You see your teammates. You rise. Then it’s time for your first event. You rise. And either you win, and rise again, or you lose, and your hot air balloon comes plummeting back down. Sometimes it’s not immediate, but it happens.”
Pritchard felt let down, isolated and forgotten about by the likes of High Performance Sport New Zealand.
“You feel purposeless, directionless, motivation might be at an all time low. You’re wondering what’s going to happen next and trying to work through all these things. It’s like a grieving process. And no one has warned you it may happen.”
Pritchard has a solution, though.
“Athletes need to be told it’s okay to feel like this. There needs to be education around it. Something as simple as telling our athletes ‘hey guys, we are so proud of you for all of you have achieved, not just at this tournament, but in the 10 to 20 years prior to that. You’ve done a lot of awesome stuff. But when you go home, you may not feel like yourself, and that’s okay, it’s just part of the process’.
“We all know how to celebrate a win. It’s easy. But we don’t know how to sit with failure, whether our own or someone else’s. Strategies can be put in place. We are not just medals, we are people, too,” Pritchard’s ideas tie in well with an HPSNZ initiative to grow awareness of mental health issues in elite sport.
“We want to enhance the mental well-being of our athletes,” says HPSNZ’s director of performance health Bruce Hamilton. “It’s about awareness and making sure everyone involved is aware of it.”
HPSNZ’s head of performance psychology Kylie Wilson says recent controversies surrounding the culture of several sports has not been the driver for the initiative.
“It’s definitely not the reason,” says Wilson. “But it’s opened up some ears and some willingness to realise we need some action on this. It’s really a positive thing.”
HPSNZ are happy to see the likes of Pritchard taking a stand, even if it means criticising them.
“Athlete voice is such a critical component of this,” Wilson says. “It’s doing stuff with athletes, rather than just doing it to them. We want to set up a group of athletes who we can engage with and bounce ideas off, ask them questions and get them to share their experiences with us.”
Pritchard is pleased to see such action being taken.
“It’s wonderful that HPSNZ is working on athlete wellness and making it a priority in their strategic plan, as it’s only going to be a good thing. They’re really starting to be leaders in this sort of thing.”