‘High risk’ time for NZ athletes
Mental health experts are warning the lockdown period will be a ‘‘high risk’’ time for athletes as they deal with the psychological impact of the cancellation of leagues and pinnacle events.
Stuff has learned High Performance Sport NZ’s (HPSNZ) psychology services have seen a spike in demand this week as athletes seek ways of coping with the ongoing disruption the Covid-19 pandemic has caused.
It comes after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday announced the Tokyo Games, scheduled to start in July this year, would be postponed to 2021. By the next day Kiwi sport stars, like the rest of New Zealand, were in lockdown.
The IOC executive is still hashing out the details with Japanese authorities around timings of the 2021 event.
This hold-up, along with the public health measures and worldwide travel restrictions in place, mean international sports federations are unable to plan what their competition schedule will look like over the next 12 months.
Likewise, athletes playing in professional sporting leagues like Super Rugby, NRL and netball’s ANZ Premiership remain in limbo with no clear timeline on when they can return to competitive sport.
Wellington clinical psychologist Karen Nimmo says as athletes are highly goal-oriented, the endless drift they are currently experiencing will be particularly challenging for them.
‘‘One of the high risk times for athletes’ mental health is when they are not playing or competing, so when they’re injured or they’ve been dropped or they’ve just retired. Obviously with coronavirus this is a new thing, we don’t have a blueprint,’’ she says.
‘‘There’s going to be a period of inactivity and no competition, so you would expect there will be difficulties with clinical issues such as depression, anxiety, potentially addiction, and certainly things like relationship conflict.
‘‘With everyone crammed up in houses, and athletes thrown out of their physical routines, it will put pressure on relationships.’’
Dealing with adversity comes as part of the job description for elite athletes. Nimmo says athletes are used to operating in a climate of uncertainty and are good at managing setbacks such as disappointment, frustration, injury and financial struggles. ‘‘Some of them don’t know where the next dollar is coming from. But when you get a big disruption like this, it is particularly tough because sport at an elite level isn’t just a job, it’s a lifestyle. Their identity is very much tied up it in all, so anything that takes a crack at that, can make them vulnerable,’’ Nimmo says. The IOC’s announcement on Wednesday, after months of playing down the severity of the global pandemic, went some way in providing clarity for New Zealand’s Olympic hopefuls. While there was widespread relief among the New Zealand athletes community at the decision, Nimmo says it is still a challenging time for them as they will be forced to reconfigure their plans for the next year.
New Zealand canoe slalom star Luuka Jones, who was among just a handful of Kiwi athletes to have had their selections confirmed for the Tokyo Games before the postponement, says she is mindful of the impact a long break from competition could have on her mental health.
‘‘It’s going to be a really strange year because there’s no real pinnacle event, and probably likely to be no racing. So it’s something I am going to have to work on from a psychological point of view, because you do tend to get absorbed in this one thing,’’ the Olympic silver medallist says.
For the past few months Jones has had to ignore the niggling doubts in the back of her mind and prepare as if the Games were going ahead. She says while she is pleased the event has been postponed, the sudden shift in gear will be a tough adjustment.
‘‘We were keeping on training on the off-chance that the Olympics would go ahead, so now it has been officially postponed I’m relieved from a health perspective, because I just didn’t think it was a good idea, but also we have all had to change our training quite dramatically because of the disruptions.
‘‘Now we’re going to have to make even more changes. We go from kind of ramping up into more intense training and building into the Games, to going right back down again to off-season training. It’s a pretty big adjustment, it’s not like a quick fix.’’
Olympic boxer and double Commonwealth Games medallist Alexis Pritchard, who now works as a mindset and performance coach, says her advice to athletes during this time is to focus on the things they can control.
‘‘There is going to be a lot of frustration and grief out there right now, but athletes are used to coping with this sort of thing. It’s now a case of refocus, readjust, and make a plan,’’ she says.
‘‘We were keeping on training on the offchance that the Olympics would go ahead, so now it has been officially postponed I’m relieved from a health perspective, because I just didn’t think it was a good idea, but also we have all had to change our training quite dramatically because of the disruptions.’’ Luuka Jones, left