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Israel/Zionism See other Israel/Zionism Articles Title: Rootless young athletes can't cope after Olympic losses... or wins RIO DE JANEIRO — The morning after her 2008 Olympics ended, gymnast Shawn Johnson awoke with one gold medal, three silvers and no idea what to eat for breakfast. She had no idea when to go to bed, either. In the weeks that followed, Johnson felt lost each day at 4 p.m., when practice had always begun. Something as basic as working out in local fitness centers proved bewildering; she’d only trained in gymnastics facilities. “You feel really lost for a while, just trying to figure out your new routine,” Johnson, now 24, recalled during an interview in Rio, where she covered gymnastics for Yahoo! Sports. “It’s a really confusing time.” Johnson’s experience — Olympic glory built on order and discipline, followed by an Olympic crash of confusion and dismay — is hardly unusual, nor is it a new phenomenon. Each of the 11,000 athletes who competed at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics over the past two weeks endured some measure of meticulous preparation, all building to a single competition when the world’s focus is most intense. Just beyond their medals and the post-Olympic exhibition tours and commemorative cereal boxes looms a hurdle they don’t see coming: Everyday life. “I remember waking up the next day after my last competition and feeling like I had run straight into a brick wall,” Johnson recalled. “As an elite athlete, you obsess; you’re a perfectionist over your field. And when you don’t have that to devote every ounce of energy to every day, it’s hard. Any elite athlete will tell you: The transition period from the Olympics into normal life is so hard.” Athletes and experts say this applies in both the near-term and years later, both to Olympic champions and those who compete once and lose, both to competitors and coaches. Sunday night, the 17 days of the Rio Games conclude. Monday morning, most Americans will rise and go work. The athletes will do — what, exactly? Many don’t know. “It’s an emotional, psychological transition, and it’s very tough,” said Steven Ungerleider, a sports psychologist and author who has worked with both the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee for four decades. “… We’re always seeing a large number of athletes who win medals, or don’t win medals, and come home, the lights are turned out, the media is gone and they go into a state of shock because they have been up on the pedestal and this emotional high for so long. And without their training regimen and support staff, it’s a tough transition”. ...............The reality: Many Olympic athletes must pay some out of pocket for training and travel. Williams-Murray returned to financial stresses. “I was burdened with debt from the run, as well as student loans,” he said Saturday by email. “I had bouts with depression and often self-medicated with alcohol and marijuana.” That isn’t a solitary story. David Boudia was 19 when he made his first Olympic team as a diver in 2008. Like most athletes, his focus on the Games defined his existence. “Everything I did, I did with the idea of going to the Olympics and winning,” Boudia said before the Rio Games began. “I wanted fame, the riches. I wanted the Games to be the vehicle that delivered all those things.” Boudia expected to win a medal, maybe two. Instead, he finished 10th in the 10-meter platform event and, with a partner, fifth in the 10-meter synchronized competition. He returned home to Indiana, enrolled at Purdue University, but entered a world he couldn’t handle. He drank. He did drugs. In his book “Greater Than Gold,” released as the Rio Games opened, he revealed that he contemplated suicide. “The Olympics didn’t fulfill me or bring me satisfaction,” Boudia said. “So for a long time, I wanted to do nothing except to stay in bed”.... Poster Comment: You know, think the RMS Olympic makes an excellent metaphor for the Olympics. Because of its numerous ignominious problems and accidents its identity was switched with its sister ship in order to be deliberately sunk -- which it was that fateful night in 1912. Reinvented as the Olympic, the Titanic "enjoyed a long and illustrious career" of 24 years (wikid). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRvMPc1KuJQ The Olympics brought ancient Greece fame and renown, but ruptured modern Greece. .... I'm just no fun. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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