Olympic Hopefuls Struggled With Mental Health in the Pandemic

He was fortunate, he said, that Jordan Gusman, one of his teammates from Tinman Elite, a running club based in Colorado, was with him. Sensing Parsons might collapse, Gusman held him upright and reassured him that he would be OK. Parsons later learned that he had been having a panic attack.

“That’s a place I never want to be in again,” he said, “and luckily I was able to get help.”

For many Olympic hopefuls, the past year and a half was a period of great uncertainty and mounting anxiety. As athletes like Parsons pressed forward through the pandemic, they grappled with shuttered training facilities, canceled meets and shoestring budgets. There was also the big unknown: whether the Tokyo Games would happen at all.

“I think it’s been a very, very rough 15 months for a whole bunch of athletes,” said Steven Ungerleider, a sports psychologist based in Oregon who serves on the executive board of the International Paralympic Committee.

The strain was especially pronounced for those whose sports are primarily showcased at the Olympics: swimmers and divers, gymnasts and rowers, runners and jumpers. Many are creatures of habit with strict routines and single-minded goals, and the pandemic was the ultimate disruption.

“They’re obsessed with getting up in the morning and eating certain things and getting out for their run and seeing their trainer and talking with their coaches,” Ungerleider said. “So when things were getting a little uncertain, that’s the worst thing that can happen to an elite athlete. It was driving them crazy.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/sports/olympics/olympics-mental-health.html