How the 'Bubble Bursts' for Elite Sports Athletes

The professional Bubble-Burst is a real concern...

"Doing well in sport is the ultimate addictive feeling, in what other job do you appear on the news and receive floods of well-done texts simply for having a good day at the office? That’s the crazy world athletes live in."

But if elite sport comes with extraordinary highs, it largely promises extraordinary brevity, too. The average age to set a world record in sport is 26.1, with retirement, often soon after 30. Running out of professional puff with a stuffed medal cabinet but decades of bill-paying and life ahead of you can unsettle even the most unflappable.

Sporting celebrities aren’t immune: Dame Kelly Holmes likened retiring to losing her entire identity; Andy Murray sought psychological help when his hip injury threatened to end his career, revealing that he had ‘zero interest’ in doing anything else; swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time with 28 medals, suffered such severe depression after calling time post-2012 Olympics that he sat alone in his bedroom for five days and contemplated suicide.

All time lows...

An International Olympic Committee report confirmed that 55% of former athletes suffer from anxiety and depression after transitioning out of sport. Catherine Spencer, 40 a former England rugby captain who retired after the Six Nations in 2011. ‘Was I depressed at my lowest point? Absolutely,’ Born into a rugby-mad family – with a PE teacher mum, and a dad and two brothers who all played – her decision to retire was prompted by age. ‘I would have been 35 by the 2014 World Cup and I wanted to retire on my terms rather than get deselected or injured, but I’ll never know if it was the right decision.’

In 2014, the England squad won the Rugby World Cup without her – something Catherine found devastating. ‘I was working for Sky TV when the whistle went and I started sobbing in the studio. The squad then won Team of the Year at BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2014, which was so amazing, but I watched with tears streaming down my face because I thought, “Could I have been the one lifting that trophy?” And then I hated myself for feeling that way.’

Experts believe this emotional struggle affects athletes with hefty medal tallies and glorious victory narratives hardest because of the life-upending impact of retirement on identity. After Sydney in 2000 and Athens in 2004, it almost took people by surprise that athletes were coming back from the Olympics, having been very successful at the one thing they’d spent years striving for, feeling flat. You’d hear, “My only goal in life was getting two Olympic medals. I’ve got them both – what do I do next?” The problem was that they’d achieved their goal without thinking beyond it.

Most people (non-professional athletes) have multiple roles, so when something goes wrong in one area, you can seek a balance because things are going right in another area. But elite athletes have just one role that takes over everything else.’ Consequently, when something within that sphere goes wrong, it feels as if your whole world is imploding. Practically, this can translate as struggling to know what to do with your morning – even your whole future. Compounding this is the fact that, for the majority of athletes, success starts to build just as their personal identity is forming.

Identity foreclosure...

Many student-athletes begin specialising and training heavily in one sport before they’ve even turned 12, and that all-or-nothing pressure to turn it into a professional career means that at an age when most tweens dart between cringeworthy emo phases, rebellious haircuts and wanting to be the next Emma Watson or Zac Efron, athletes already define themselves by (and make life decisions based on) their careers above anything else.

This phenomenon is known as ‘identity foreclosure’, a term defined as: ‘when a commitment is made without exploring alternatives’ – something that certainly rings true to Sam Spencer and millions of other professional sports athletes. Every decision they make from their teens up until their retirement they admit, was sport-first.

Retirement...

When Sam Spencer left competitive sport, having ticked off a to-do list that would delight even the pushiest of parents – Olympic medallist, world champion, world record holder – she crashed.

‘I went from being a self-assured expert in my sport to second-guessing myself in job interviews when I was asked what made me a worthy candidate for that role,’ she recalls. ‘I overanalysed the current me and glorified how busy I used to be, representing my country. Physically, the biceps and triceps that I’d worked so hard to build during swimming training just disappeared, and I became concerned about maintaining my body’s strength and size without someone there to give me the formula.’

Sam lasted two months after retirement – during which she couldn’t join friends in the pub for a beer without stressing over her next move – before launching herself back into the world of sport, taking a mentoring role at the British Athletes Commission. To say it opened her eyes to the scale of the issue is an understatement.

‘Within a month, I’d met multiple retiring or retired athletes suffering with serious mental health issues; struggling with financial difficulty because funding abruptly stopped after retirement, while battling a loss of identity,’ she explains. The individuals’ biggest concern was what to do next, professionally and logistically; many had moved to towns like to be close to training centres, which no longer had the professional opportunities or social networks to serve them once they’d retired.

Many professional athletes don't have qualifications or the opportunity to study because their sports hadn’t been supportive or flexible in allowing them the time to do so. It meant that, on retirement, there was no thread of continuity in their lives, no academic skill set or part-time job to fall back on, and very little information about how to turn their contact book and transferable skills as an athlete into tools for a business environment.

A survey of 800 former sportspeople by the Professional Players Federation found that 50% did not feel in control of their lives within two years of their careers ending.

Reality check...

This is something that all professional sports people and elite athletes need to become aware of long before they even consider retirement or even run the risk of a career ending injury. Anything is possible in the world of sports, with many high and lows along the way, but one thing is certain with vast amounts evidence, statistics and broken athletes to prove it; Retirement is inevitable, so if you are an elite athlete or sports professional? You need to act now and build a lifestyle career outside of your sports career.

Shane Mulgrew