Such were the unique set of challenges and experiences around the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics this summer that any post-Games comedown may be delayed in onset, if it comes it all. It may still be too soon to tell.
Jessie Barr, Sport and Performance Psychologist at the Sport Ireland Institute, who brought that role to Tokyo as part of Team Ireland, suggests that even four months on from Tokyo many athletes may still be processing the many parts of their participation, for better or for worse.
“What I’ve seen from some athletes is maybe that post-Games comedown is a little bit more delayed,” says Barr. “For example, I work with track cyclists based in Majorca, so for a lot of the pandemic they were based away from their friends and family. So for them that post-Games period was just spending time at home with people they haven’t seen in months and months.
“Clearly, the excitement of just being home with friends and family meant that kind of post-Games comedown was delayed, and it’s maybe kind of happening now rather than that immediate month or two afterwards.
“What I will say is how impressed I was in how resilient the athletes I worked with were, how adaptable they were given the circumstances. They were still able to go out to the Games and focus on performance at the end of the day, despite everything they had to get through when they got out there.”
Barr’s own Olympic experience come in London 2012 in the 4x400m relay, plus her conversions with younger brother Thomas, now a two-time Olympian in the 400m hurdles, just missing out on the final in Tokyo. After some high-profile athletes struggled with their comedown after Beijing 2008, including boxing medal winners Kenneth Egan and the late Darren Sutherland, Sport Ireland developed the athlete transition programme, now considered one of their key services.
“Our athlete’s transition programme has grown and grown each year, it’s much more visible than it was in 2012 and 2016,” says Barr. “It’s very much their chance to unpack, that’s what we call it, unpacking from the Games, just really reflecting on their whole experience, and it helps us to learn what they found positive and what they found negative, what they learned from it.
“It’s a really good opportunity for the athletes to share how they’re feeling, to understand they’re not the only ones who are saying, ‘I had a great time and now I’m back in my parents’ kitchen, and I’m just thinking about the next thing’ and there’s that kind of ‘now what’ feeling.
“Sometimes the ones carrying on find it as challenging as the ones who are transitioning out into another career because there’s that feeling of, ‘oh I have to start it all again, I’ve reached my goal and now I just do it again’. So depending on what stage they’re at, they’re either given some support on how to re-focus, re-frame and set new goals around maybe next year, which is such a busy year for athletics, or they work on life skills around developing a new career path.”
So far anyway, Barr has been nothing but impressed at the way Kellie Harrington has managed the comedown from winning an Olympic gold medal, even if the Dublin boxer admitted herself she returned to full training too soon.
“You know the people who probably will cope well with it, and she was someone who did, kept her feet firmly on the ground, went back to work in the hospital and hasn’t gone pro because that’s not what her goals are. I think every athlete’s different, she has a very good team around her who have kept her grounded, that’s very important.
“It would be very easy to win a gold medal and to be pulled in 50 different directions, it’s very easy to go in all those directions and be completely overwhelmed, but I think she knew what she wanted, she went in there with a plan and knew what the post-Games was probably going to look like.
“She’s that example of what it can look like when you win a gold medal, you can stay grounded, but also that was her decision. She’s a really incredible role model and I think her age shows as well, she’s a bit more mature, she’s been in the game a long time and she’s probably seen other people go through it. Ten years ago, if she had won that medal, maybe it would have looked very different.”
