THE WHEELS FELL OFF... I WAS DRINKING EVERY DAY
ALEX PARTRIDGE won silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and bronze at London 2012 as a rower in Great Britain’s eight. Now working for financial wellbeing app Wagestream, the 39-year-old tells Sportsmail about his battle with depression.
IN BRITISH ROWING, everyone gets gold. That’s the expectation. If you don’t, you just haven’t achieved, so I felt like a failure. I knew I was going to finish after London but I didn’t want to. I was getting stronger as I was getting older, but mentally I was done with the programme. I was looking to see if I could do something different and then come back, but that wasn’t available. The head coach, Jurgen Grobler, said: ‘If you want to carry on, you need to do it this way’, so I walked. I didn’t even announce my retirement. I just drifted away. It was weird. Your funding gets cut and that’s it. Nobody calls to say, ‘Are you all right? How’s it going?’ I had been on the team since the age of 16. Rowing is all day, every day. It’s your life. So you stop your life at the age of 30-odd and you’ve got to start it again, but with all these responsibilities like a family and a mortgage. I was massively unhappy outside of rowing, couldn’t find my way. I got a job with a consultancy firm but I had no idea about it. Then I moved into sales — but I was not motivated by money and I struggled. I felt myself getting more and more depressed. It cranks up. It was building up in 2016, Olympic year, and I started rowing again. I was like, ‘Oh I just want one more crack at Henley Royal Regatta’. But subconsciously it was: ‘I wonder if I can get back for the Olympics?’ Then when the eight won gold in Rio, the wheels fell off. I didn’t begrudge them, but there was a stupid feeling of, ‘If only I’d carried on.’ I had rowed with all those guys for years and would have been the same age as most of them. I just had a meltdown. I became the opposite person. I wasn’t interested in exercise. I put on weight and was drinking every day. I was caught drink-driving and because of the press exposure, my employer couldn’t keep me on. You become dysfunctional and you are not making rational decisions. I didn’t know who I was, how I was going to support a family. I moved back with my parents. That was the lowest point. I was thinking: ‘I’m going to lose the most important things to me — my children, my family. Why am I self-destructing?’ I had suicidal thoughts. You can’t understand how four years ago you were the best in the world, able to do things people can’t dream of, then nothing in the world seems to be enjoyable. When the wheels fell off, no one from British Rowing called me. My crew-mates from over the years were supportive but they are not professionals. Nobody from the sporting organisation was there. Rowing and a lot of sports need to realise that just because you walk out of that changing room and you don’t come back, you are still important to them. You still want to feel a part of that thing. There were coaches you would speak to every day, core people you depend on so much. They need to recognise the impact of cutting off that support. The reason I am in a good place now is that I focused on the elements that create positive mental health — physical, social, emotional and financial. That has come from my mates and my local community. Sport needs to be more proactive. Even now, I find things really stressful. I now know what to do when it comes. I went to see a counsellor and that was the best thing I did. I tried to find my purpose in life. I then started to try to help others that were going through a difficult time. That led me to the job I do now at Wagestream, which improves people’s financial resilience and their broader wellbeing. I have realised now that what I want to do is help people. By doing that, I find it helps me.