Jul 29, 2021
Ten years ago, or even five, an athlete of Simone Biles’ stature might have been reluctant to say that she struggled with pressure, much less to have withdrawn in the middle of an Olympic competition.
“People might have labeled an athlete mentally weak,” Hillary Cauthen, a clinical sports psychologist in Austin, Texas, said Tuesday, hours after Biles, the greatest gymnast in history, had bowed out of the women’s team event at the Tokyo Games, and one day before she said she would also skip the all-around individual competition.
But a shift in cultural acceptance began to take place in 2015-16, when the NCAA created a mental health initiative, Cauthen said. Just before the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever, began to discuss wrestling with depression and suicidal thoughts. Since then, NBA players DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love and figure skater Gracie Gold, among other athletes, have gone public
She can be a role model : Psychologist, former Olympian weighs in on mental pressures of professional athletes following Simone Biles withdraw from Olympics
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Top athletes everywhere improvised as he did, finding ways to train even as the Summer Olympics were postponed a year because of the pandemic. He went on to construct a shot put ring; another built a backyard pole vault runway; they ran through the streets, transformed garages into home gyms and created bubbles to compete on the basketball court. Michael Phelps tops the list of most decorated Olympians in history - and it’s really not even close.
The decision that the Tokyo Olympics would be delayed was made in March 2020 and over the following year, some sports events did not take place, while others were halted temporarily to continue with staggered sessions, rapid testing and few fans.