Victoria Pendleton’s candour highlights again the vulnerability of ex-champions

There were no tears when Victoria Pendleton won her first Olympic gold medal. There was no great emotional climax, no comforting sense, in the aftermath, that her life was now complete. She did not even really feel like celebrating. “It’s like a big anticlimax anyway,” she confided a year later. “I mean, how could you achieve your dream? You don’t plan for the next day. In the morning it’s like it never happened, like you’re reading about it in a comic book. When you’re in that adrenaline-fuelled environment you take in so little … so it’s not easy for it to feel real. I went there with a job to do, I did it and left.”

It does not seem fair that, after all that effort, Pendleton should have found so little lasting joy in her reward. She said when she first retired that she was looking forward to living without the stress of training and the strain of competition. But like so many sportspeople the former Great Britain cyclist has since suffered agonies of the soul and she has spoken about them with candour and bravery. This week Pendleton revealed the frightening yet too credible truth that she had, last year, contemplated suicide.

There are many well-documented reasons why athletes are so vulnerable after retirement. Psychologists speak of the loss of identity they experience when their careers are over; the practical difficulties of transitioning to “civilian” life when their strict regimes and mountainous ambitions have fallen away. Several former athletes have talked of the struggle to reintegrate with a world that does not focus entirely on their needs, or to engage in unselfish relationships.

There is a different but telling factor in Pendleton’s story. Her most recent depression was triggered by a bout of hypoxia, brought on when she attempted to climb Mount Everest. It cannot be a coincidence that she found relief in yet another gruelling physical challenge – surfing in Costa Rica, where a daily dose of “massive rogue waves … knocked seven bells out of [her].” It is certainly not a surprise: this is the same woman who coped with retirement from cycling by becoming a jump jockey. Where other people take up horse riding as a hobby, Pendleton chose horse racing.

That craving for new challenges is seen in retired champions all the time. What else can explain Usain Bolt’s desire, now sadly unfulfilled, to prove himself on a football field? Sir Chris Hoy has swapped two wheels for four, appeasing his duelling instincts at Le Mans and Silverstone. The sprinter John Regis dislocated two ribs trying to make the British bobsled team. The rower James Cracknell was cycling across America on a record attempt when he had his life-altering crash.

Ollie Phillips, the former England rugby sevens captain, has spoken eloquently of how the competitive hunger can haunt and harm you after retirement. “There were times when I looked at myself and thought: ‘I don’t want to be here’,” he said. “I’ve probably accepted not being a sportsman but have I truly accepted that it is not me any more? Maybe not entirely. And as a result you chase highs and ego boosts. They give you a kick in the short term but the highs are high, the lows are very low and you don’t know how to get out of them.”

It explains why men like Andrew Flintoff and Rio Ferdinand should be drawn to the intense environment of the boxing ring, even when there are painful and potentially dangerous consequences. Flintoff had everyone worried (and a few simply baffled) when he decided to train for his first professional fight under Barry McGuigan. He won but even McGuigan admitted he would not like him to keep it up. Earlier this year it took the British Boxing Board of Control refusing Rio Ferdinand a licence to prevent him attempting a similar path.

To those of us whose goals tend towards the modest – for whom willpower is a matter of facing down that fourth custard cream – it can be hard to relate to this side of a sportsperson. If someone has sacrificed so much, and sweated so hard, for that gold medal on the mantelpiece, or that rainbow jersey in the wardrobe, one would hope and imagine it would bring a level of contentment and satisfaction for the rest of their days. They had a dream and achieved it through their own hard work. If that does not bring peace, what can?

But the medal is never the real prize. Matt Damon once said of his Good Will Hunting Oscar that he was glad he won it so young, because he was able to learn, at the start of his career rather than the end, that the little golden statuette did not bring happiness.

Athletes are driven and conditioned towards being the best, conquering the odds, pushing themselves further than seems physically possible. The fact that they have proved it once – or twice or multiple times – is rarely enough to satisfy. Just ask Steve Redgrave why he got back in that boat or Sugar Ray Leonard why he stepped back in the ring.

Pendleton will return to our screens this spring – in a celebrity version of SAS: Who Dares Wins, the TV show that recreates the SAS selection process by putting its contestants through a nightmarish series of physical and psychological trials. It is an audacious choice for someone recovering from depression. And even Pendleton wonders if her self-confessed adrenaline addiction is ultimately healthy. “Because I wonder how it’s sustainable,” she says. “And why I do it.”

In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or [email protected]. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

source: theguardian.com