When the shine rubs off post-games
As Usain Bolt starts his goodbye games, Guy Kelly looks at the troubles other medal winners have faced when they’re no longer winning
During the past decade or so, we have grown accustomed to the sight of British athletes beaming from the medal podiums at international sporting events. It occurred with an almost embarrassing frequency at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics last summer; the same happened five years ago this week, at the London Games, where Team GB won a total of 65 medals, 29 of them gold; and we can only hope it returns during the next fortnight, when the Queen Elizabeth Park hosts Usain Bolt’s farewell World Athletics Championships. To the casual observer, it might look like those medallists are set for life: that at the pinnacle of their chosen disciplines they will simply live off the glory forever. As Gail Emms revealed this week, however, that couldn’t be further from reality.
In a remarkably honest blog post, Emms, who won a silver medal in the badminton mixed doubles competition at the 2004 Athens Olympics, spoke of her battle attempting to re-enter the working world after her sporting success faded. Nine years on from retiring, she admitted that she is still unable to find another job.
“I have just turned 40 years old. I have no qualifications other than a sports science degree completed in 1998. I haven’t had any experience in any organisation or company,” Emms wrote. “I feel ashamed and it’s a massive dent in my pride to admit that an Olympic medallist is struggling [...] I do wonder if the powers-that-be at UK Sport realise that the athletes they rely on for the country’s feel-good factor can sink into this situation.”
A day after publishing the article on online women’s sport magazine Themixedzone.co.uk, Emms has received more than a thousand messages of support, ranging from well-wishers to job offers and, notably, other athletes thanking her for shining a light on an all-too-common problem.
“It hasn’t been the reaction I was expecting at all,” Emms says. “It was just therapeutic for me to write it down because I’ve reached a breaking point. Now I’m inundated with amazing responses.”
Like a lot of would-be professional athletes, Emms trained almost full-time from childhood to become a world-class badminton player, and scarcely ever paused to think about what she might do afterwards. On court, her hard work paid off: in addition to an Olympic silver, her trophy cabinet at home in Milton Keynes contains five Commonwealth medals and two European Championship golds. But when she retired after the Beijing Olympics in 2008, there was nowhere to turn. “I was offered three months of what’s called ‘athlete services’ from UK Sport – things like physio, some lifestyle advice – but in reality all retired athletes want to do is get drunk and eat burgers for a while. And when the three months is gone, then what? You just assume you will be fine because you have a medal.” Not knowing what career she would be suited for, Emms wrote out a CV, which consisted of little more than: “played badminton”. She did her best to explain how those shuttlecock-thwacking skills were transferable to the working world but, she concedes: “It’s quite obvious you’re just blagging.” Quickly, depression hit, alleviated by starting a family with her partner in 2009. They now have two children, Harry, seven, and four-year-old Oliver, which gives her “the bit of purpose I need. Without my kids, I don’t know what I’d do”. Aside from the odd well-paid motivational speaking gig, though, she has never been able to find a solid second career, despite interviewing for various marketing or sports roles, meaning that she has struggled to pay bills. “I have a worse car now than I did when I was 20. I sell things on ebay – fortunately not my medals just yet – and I have to watch my kids’ friends go on holiday when we can only put a paddling pool in the garden,” she says. “I was very lucky to have my career, but I’m a sportswoman who relies on ego. We get used to winning. It’s as if I used to be somebody, and now I’m nothing. When I meet employers I could go, ‘Hi, I’m Gail Emms, and I’m amazing at badminton,’ and they’d obviously go, ‘So what?’”
Emms’ story may have gone viral, but it’s far from unique. The big names in athletics have it made, of course, with advertisers rushing to sign them up and brand ambassadorships flooding in. If you’re a Mo Farah, a Jessica Ennishill or a Tom Daley, you’re unlikely to be down the Jobcentre any time soon. But for those who are not household names, it’s a different story. For instance, Zoe Smith, a weightlifting gold medallist for Great Britain at the London games, revealed she’s now working in a coffee shop.
Some countries treat their athletes better: Singapore offered a cash
‘It’s a massive dent in my pride to admit an Olympic medallist is struggling’
bonus of £578,000 per gold last year; and a few, like South Korea, give their medallists lifetime pensions.
That isn’t to say Olympians’ struggles don’t exist abroad. Team USA’S Ronda Rousey won bronze in judo in Beijing 2008, but spoke of living out of her Honda Accord by the end of that year, while working as a cocktail waitress. Meanwhile, Debi Thomas, the first African-american to win a figure skating medal, in 1988, declared bankruptcy in 2014.
“Winning a medal can open some doors, but even winning gold doesn’t give you enough of a platform to do something with it,” says Tim Baillie, who won gold in the canoe slalom at London 2012, with his teammate, Etienne Stott. Baillie retired in 2014, aged 34, realising that his heart wasn’t in it: “You stop and you’re mid-thirties, with no pension, nothing. I really wasn’t very well set up financially. I realised I would have to find a job and work forever.” Fortunately, Baillie had a degree in mechanical engineering and an aptitude for computers, meaning that he could ask for work experience at a company in Nottingham.
He is now a full-time web developer, and supports two children, as well as his pregnant wife, Sarah. “I guess I was fortunate to have been studying at a time when tuition fees were free, so I had [something] to fall back on. You need to learn something else for that moment you’re out of the system,” he says.
Ironically, Emms argues, Team GB’S success is part of the problem. “The Olympics is like a cult,” she says. “We’re second in the medal table, yes, but we have so many athletes. And they aren’t going to get the rewards they think they’ll get for winning. They just join us in the queue.”
Anthony Ogogo, 28, was another hero of 2012, winning a bronze in middleweight boxing, and became a poster boy for those Games. “I was the most well-known boxer of all the medallists for a period, better known than Anthony Joshua [now the unified heavyweight champion] even, and taking up lots of column inches, predicted to have the biggest professional career. But then injuries struck,” he says.
As recurrent injuries put Ogogo’s career on hold – time in which he appeared on reality shows such as Strictly Come Dancing to keep up his profile – life outside of the Olympic set-up hit hard. “It can be really lonely,” he says. “Part of it is that the Team GB set-up is so good. In an Olympics you are part of this one huge team, so you have doctors, physios, all this support around you. When you’re out of that, you’re out on your own.”
Despite doctors advising against it, Ogogo is still training, in the hope of a boxing return. But what if he can’t make a comeback? What contingency plans are there? “[Retirement] is just not something I think about, because all my energy is on getting back in the ring and achieving my goal of becoming a champion,” he says. “Degrees take a long time and a lot of your mental energy, [and] it’s tough to do that and follow your chosen sport.”
According to Leon Lloyd, a former England rugby player, that approach is the problem. Along with Beth Tweddle, the former Olympic gymnast who retired at 28, Lloyd is now a director at Switch the Play, a social enterprise providing support workshops for athletes struggling to “transition” after their sporting careers end, that attitude is the problem.
“[It’s] the classic invincible mentality. People come in with their arms crossed, all ego and unable to accept the issue. Regardless of success and salary, everyone has the same problem,” he says. “You can plan and you should. There’s a lot of down time in sport, so if they use that to pick up some work experience, they will be so thankful for it.
“These are people who understand that hard work in training pays off in the tournaments, so we need to get them to see that preparation during their playing careers pays off when they retire, too. That’s the challenge.”
It’s something Emms could have done with. She will now pause, she says, assess her options and try to restart her life. Hopefully, somewhere in those thousand replies is her dream job.
“I don’t know what that is, but I’m OK with not knowing. I just want to sink my teeth into something and get back on my feet. I think I’m really good. I hope I can show that.”