THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD
Simone Biles’ decision to step back from Olympic competition in Tokyo opened a window into serious mental health challenges faced by athletes
O“At times, elite performance
can appear to be almost effortless. However, success
can come at a cost.”
— Dawn Shadron, UConn’s director of student athlete counseling and
mental health services
nly Simone Biles could know the pressure she felt as she approached the vault at the Olympics in Tokyo. Biles, an internationally known star in gymnastics for 10 years, carried the trauma of sexual abuse. A Black woman in a sport that has long been predominantly white, Biles carried the responsibility of being a symbol and spokesperson. Already a four-time Olympic gold medalist and recognized as one of the greatest performers of all time, she carried the expectation that at 24 she would do it once again.
And then she stunned the world, removing herself from the competition to focus on her mental well-being.
Biles’ decision has become a flash point in the debate over mental health among athletes, especially those who face pressure to win at a young age. In the caldron of social media, some have criticized Biles for quitting, but many more have praised her courage. Experts in mental health said she made the right call in publicly confronting her issues.
And those who track the physical and mental health of athletes say Biles’ struggles highlight a fundamental flaw in the world of sports as expectations continue to ratchet higher for younger and younger athletes.
“Athletic events, similar to musical and theater performances, allow viewers to witness remarkable talent and skill,” said Dawn Shadron, UConn’s director of student athlete counseling and mental health services. “At times, elite performance can appear to be almost effortless.
However, success can come at a cost.”
There are the physical demands that come along with intensive training and competition, Shadron said. But there are also psychological and emotional stresses that rarely break into public view.
“Then there’s the social media aspect and self-doubt that can come from inappropriate comments, undue scrutiny and expectations that lack empathy and understanding of the athlete experience and support of the whole person,” she said. “The fantasies created about perfection and elite performance are not always as they seem.”
Focus on gold
Biles, from Spring, Texas, spent much of her early years in foster care before her grandfather, Ron Biles, adopted her. As she discovered her talent in gymnastics, she immersed herself, home schooling from 2012 on to increase her practice time to 32 hours per week. She went on to win five world championships in the all-around, and four gold medals at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Athletes in all sports can suffer from the relentless pressure to succeed. Former UConn men’s basketball player Alterique Gilbert needed a break to tend to his mental health before resuming his career. UConn coach Dan Hurley nearly quit basketball as a college player at Seton Hall, as the pressures of living up to expectations bore down on him. In 2006, MLB pitcher Zack Greinke considered quitting and took nearly a year to confront depression and anxiety.
But the Olympic Games bring a unique type of stress because in many sports they represent four years of training culminating in one moment. Bonnie Edmondson of Coventry coached throwers for the U.S. track and field team in 2016 and was the head track and field coach at the 2019 World Championships.
“In Rio,” Edmondson said, “we had some athletes who were getting tremendous amounts of pressure from their towns. They came from small towns. This was the greatest thing that ever happened to this town. They’d get escorted out of the town by the police, big parades. Everybody is watching you. How do you handle that pressure when you need to be focused on your event?”
Sara Hendershot, a rower from Simsbury who finished fourth in the 2012 London Games in the women’s pair, said, “There’s a lot to unpack there. I think the mental strain and stressors that are on any elite athlete, especially an Olympian, once they’re on that stage, are immense and really complex, because they come at you from so many different angles. For someone like Simone Biles, there’s a whole other level of it because she not only has the pressure of USA gymnastics and being the face of her team and really this year the face of the entire Team USA — that comes with so much pressure, so much expectation. I think that, compounded with COVID this past year, has to be completely unfathomable and hard for anyone to understand, except for her.”
Dr. Colleen Hacker, director of kinesiology at Pacific Lutheran, is a certified mental performance consultant who has served as a mental skills coach and performance psychology specialist for the United States women’s soccer and ice hockey teams in six Olympics, and has worked with athletes in MLB, the NFL and the PGA and LPGA tours, among other professionals.
Hacker says the seeds of mental health problems are sown early in an athlete’s life.
“These issues, the machine that has become the professionalizing of sports has been on a fast track, become younger and younger and younger, all genders, all sports, an over-investment in results rather than process, a monetization occurring in youth sports,” Hacker said. “The youth sports world is a multimillion-dollar industry, and I don’t think people see that or understand the ramifications of that. We’re seeing the predictable outcome from this decadeslong shift to professionalization of sport with a myopic focus on outcome and results.”
A need for heroes
Adding to the pressure of this year’s Olympics, which were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic and are being staged without fans and with strict health and safety protocols, is the worldwide need for good news. “During the pandemic, nations are hungry for a good story, hungry for heroes and heroines, hungry for triumphs over adversity, so we mythologize human beings,” Hacker said.
And Biles was carrying far more than the usual athlete.
“Dealing with the trauma of the [Larry] Nassar abuse, then dealing with being the only remaining active competitor who is a survivor of Nassar’s abuse, so imagine how many interviews are bringing that up. What is the traumatizing effect? The re-traumatizing effect? What is that doing to emotions or focus, and we don’t know what other traumas occurred,” Hacker said of the former USA Gymnastics team doctor who was convicted of sexually abusing athletes.
“Then in a year of Black Lives Matter, and being asked to be a voice for Black girls and women in the sport of gymnastics, which is traditionally white, imagine the vise getting tighter and tighter and tighter. We’re asking her to shoulder it all, and we’re seeing the effects of that.”
“Simone Biles faced unconscionable abuse at the hands of a doctor that USA Gymnastics and the USOPC did nothing about,” said former gymnast Sarah Klein, who was the first known victim of Nassar and is now an attorney and advocate for victims of sexual abuse. “For her to suit up and continue competing on behalf of these corrupt organizations because she felt that there should be a survivor represented on the team, in the hopes of some accountability, is simply heroic.”
Since her decision to withdraw, Biles noticed the outpouring of support and responded, via Twitter, “it has made me realize I’m more than my accomplishments and gymnastics, which I never truly believed before.”
“When consistent praise is aimed at what you do rather than who you are, it can be easy to confuse one’s ‘accomplishments’ with one’s ‘identity.’ Having a singular focus in life, in pursuit of excellence, can result in a young person forgoing many other life experiences typical of peers their age,” Shadron said.
Praise, support
It was clear something was not right when Biles, though she had the best scores in the qualifying rounds last Sunday, lost points for uncharacteristically shaky dismounts.
Biles is being evaluated each day and, after withdrawing from Sunday’s individual event finals in the vault and uneven bars, has not yet ruled out competing in the floor exercise finals Monday and balance beam Tuesday. Her teammate, Sunisa Lee, 18, captured the gold medal in the all-around competition.
“You start out playing for the love of the sport,” Hacker said, “the joy, being with your friends. I would like to think you do that for the entirety of your career, not just at the beginning of it. … I’m not sure what the general public prizes, but to deny, or sublimate or ignore mental health is a very dangerous decision to make. I feel like there’s a certain segment of the population that wants folks to suffer in silence.”
But in the days that followed Biles’ decision, her honesty won support and praise from fellow athletes around the world.
“I’m really proud to be considered an Olympic athlete and to be in a group with someone like Simon Biles,” said Margaux Farrell, an Amity High graduate who won a bronze medal for France in swimming at the 2012 Games and is now a morning anchor at Fox61, “because she had the courage to say what a lot of people feel and don’t talk about. It was an inspiring moment. Her shedding light on that and telling the world, ‘It’s OK not to be OK,’ no matter who you are, I thought it was pretty powerful and it shows everyone that mental health is the same as physical health, that health is health.”