US Olympic skiers Jackie Wiles and Breezy Johnson explain how mental health can affect athletes before and during competition.
SEATTLE — During the 2021 Summer Olympics, gymnast Simone Biles raised awareness of the importance of mental health. bile he retired from the Olympics due to his mental problems and admitted that he was afraid of spinning in the air.
Biles said he has to put mental health first because if he doesn’t, he won’t enjoy his sport and he won’t be successful.
Biles isn’t the only Olympian to feel this way.
In 2018, less than a week before the Winter Olympic Games, American skier Jackie Wiles crashed at a World Cup event in Germany. Wiles suffered leg and knee injuries and his Olympic dreams were dashed.
Wiles could not compete physically and would also be tested mentally.
“It’s been tough, and you know there are times when I think what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten hurt and gone straight into the Olympics from a podium, on a course where I knew I could ski really fast,” he said. Willes. “That haunted me for a while.”
Wiles would rehab and get his body back, but that wasn’t the hardest part of the routine.
“I think the hardest part of coming back is the mental toughness, feeling like wanting to go fast again,” Wiles explained. “Every time I get back on the snow, I feel like I’m fit enough, and my skiing gets to a point where I think I can be fast. But mentally, I get to a point where I hold back a little bit, maybe because of fear of re-injuring myself or not having 100% confidence in myself with my knee.
Wiles said that working with a sports psychologist helped a lot.
“I think by doing those talks with our sports psychologist, it really helped me get to a place of calm and peace in terms of having this focus, that if I’m stressed during a race, nervous, scared or anxious, I have tools that can help me get to a place of calm and focus,” Wiles said.
His teammate, Breezy Johnson, has also had his ups and downs. Johnson has been on the podium in several big races, but he’s also suffered some serious injuries. She knows that mental health is something that cannot be taken lightly, especially when she is recovering from injuries.
“Nothing completely solves the problems that you’re going through, because what you want and you know it’s going to solve is to get back, to race again,” Johnson said. “I think I worked a lot with Alex, who is my sports psychologist, trying to find the root of what made me unhappy or anxious because I had a lot of anxiety too.
Johnson stressed by lack of control. He dreaded the uncertainty of when or if she would ever return to a sport that had loved and blessed her for so many years. She was angry and sad, but she credits her psychologist with helping her control her emotions.
“What Alex helped me with was figuring out, like, the root of it. So I’d be like, oh well, actually, I’m anxious because I think I can’t do this leg press because it means my leg isn’t big enough.” strong, that it’s not going to be strong enough in the timeline where I needed it to be strong enough,” Johnson explained. “So to be able to know, where my emotions were coming from was just a little more control, that could give me, like that first step to say, okay, I can get through this.”
