The
article below was recently published by The Times. It was written by our friend and colleague, Stuart Weir of Verité Sport. In light of the rise in awareness of mental health issues in
sport, Stuart’s article is most timely. I hope it is of value to you.
CREDO | STUART WEIR
An Olympics where it’s OK
not to be OK is the winner
Stuart Weir
Saturday August 21 2021, 12.01am,
The Times
Iwas
privileged to be at the recent Olympic Games in Tokyo as a sports writer, but
also trying to offer some spiritual support to athletes. One of the issues to
emerge from the experience of sport in a pandemic has been consideration of the
mental health of athletes.
The American gymnast Simone Biles had the courage and honesty
to talk about the challenges that she faced. At one level she had it all —
world champion by the age of 16, four Olympic gold medals at the age of 19. Yet
she said that gymnastics was all consuming, resulting in some undesirable side
effects. She said that in Tokyo she had realised that she was “more than my
accomplishments and gymnastics, which I never truly believed”.
She was opening up about a common tension for athletes. Sport
promotes a performance-driven identity. You are judged on your performance. If
you win a medal, you are a success. Everyone wants a piece of you. If you do
not make the final, you are a loser and can feel of no value. If you win, Nike
may be dangling a lucrative contract in front of you. If it all goes wrong, you
may need to find another job.
Athletes are told they need to be mentally strong. Talking
about mental health has tended to be seen as a weakness. An athlete talking
about mental health was told to “man-up” or was dismissed as not being
resilient enough, not able to stand the pressure. Sports psychologists were
employed to make athletes mentally tougher. Coaches would routinely bully
athletes to supposedly make them tougher. Now we are much quicker to recognise
mental or spiritual needs as being as important as physical.
Tokyo 2020 brought additional pressures, with athletes only
allowed into the Olympic Village a few days before their competition and
expected to leave shortly afterwards.
In the village they lived like prisoners, allowed to leave
only for training or competition. No sight-seeing. No shopping. No family or
friends to celebrate or commiserate with.
Normally at an Olympics there are opportunities for athletes
to attend religious services, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Jewish,
and there are clergy and sports chaplains available to help athletes navigate
the pressures of elite competition. In Tokyo any such support was virtual, with
no chaplains allowed into the Olympic Village.
A recent comment on Twitter by the
respected athletics coach Stuart McMillan gives a helpful commentary on the
issue: “Our ego often pushes us to perform out of a place of fear, of needing
to show the world that I’m good enough. When we can let go of that noise, and
realise that competition is about getting the most out of ourselves, we can
fulfil our potential.”
We are loved by God for who we are — not because of what we
can do. If an athlete understands that they are significant because God created
them and loves them, they are free to compete and use the gifts they have been
given. They do not have to be successful to prove themselves worthy of God’s
love.
Nicola McDermott, a high-jumper who won silver for Australia
in Tokyo, said after her competition: “Jumping with the peace that you are
loved can take you to heights you have never seen before. I have been able to
enjoy the process and not really be impacted in who I truly am as I have been
more exposed to success and the spotlight. I believe that is a very core of my
being, my faith in God which remains the same whether performances increase or
decrease. That is the hope that I hang on to like an anchor. Eventually my
sporting life will end but I know that these things will never fade away.”
Abigail Irozuru, the British long-jumper and Tokyo finalist,
shares that view: “Being a Christian means that I want to do everything with
excellence because that is what I believe we are called to do as followers of
Jesus. Understanding that it is all by God’s grace has helped. When I remember
that it takes the weight off my shoulders and stops me putting pressure on
myself. It helps me to enjoy competing.
“I love the quotation from Eric Liddell, ‘God made me for a
purpose but he also made me fast and when I run I feel his pleasure’, and I
want to feel God’s pleasure when I jump.”
The Tokyo Games were like none other,
where athletes with a faith seemed to rely on it more heavily than usual and
where it was recognised that it was all right not to be all right and that
athletes were much more than just physical beings.
Stuart Weir is director of Verité Sport, a charity that
promotes a Christian presence in sport.
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