Why Athletes Overextend Themselves
& Why I Supported Simone Bile's Decision to Withdraw from Competing
If you keep up with current events or are keeping up with the Tokyo Olympics, then you’ve probably heard the commentary surrounding Olympic gold gymnast Simone Biles withdrawing from the U.S. team’s final and the individual all-around competition last week. Biles pulled out of competing because she didn’t feel like she was mentally healthy enough to compete adequately and safely. Biles had a tough vault earlier last week, scoring an entire point below her average (@AndreaOrris). To put this in perspective, Biles is the only gymnast to complete a Yurchenko double pike off the vault. She’s so elite in her sport that judges have been stumped before on how to score her because some of her stunts had never been done before. So why are white men, like tv personality Piers Morgan (who is British), upset with her and calling her a “quitter?” Today Biles even went back to compete on the balance beam and won bronze. Some commentators are still not satisfied with that, yet are all too eager to take credit for her return (again, looking at you Piers Morgan).
I was a high school athlete, which is nowhere near the same level as any athlete competing in Tokyo. But even so, I remember how anxious I would get before a game, meet, or performance. If you are or were an athlete or a performer, you probably know what this anxiety feels like as well. I cannot imagine the amount of pressure professional athletes feel. I don’t even know how college athletes feel when they compete. There is already enough pressure to live up to their own personal expectations. They’ve put in so much hard work, given up so many once-in-a-lifetime experiences of their youth, and probably will deal with chronic pain for the rest of their lives. Sometimes, all of those years of hard work come down to a only few hours of competition. And when they’re competing with a team, for a school, or on behalf of their country, their performance is not only to fulfill their hopes and expectations. Their performance can affect the hopes and expectations of all of their teammates, coaching staff, loved ones, supporters, and community. They know that their win will make others feel like they’ve won, and their loss will be taken as a collective loss. Earlier last month we saw how British soccer fans reacted to Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka after they failed to make the penalty kicks in the Euro 2020 final, costing England the championship. Those young men were blamed and mercilessly harassed online. Fans attacked them with threats and racial slurs. A mural of Marcus was defaced. The bullying became so brutal that Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prince William made public statements condemning it. Sports are an amazing part of the culture when we remember how they create community and teach us how to support others. But sports turn sour when we make them all about ourselves, take them too seriously, or forget that coaches and athletes are human beings just like us. Our entitlement ruins any of the fun athletes and fans are supposed to have.
Performing can be stressful whether you are a professional athlete playing for a league championship, or a little kid playing in a Saturday soccer match. In high school, I was on the varsity field hockey, lacrosse, and indoor track team. I played in piano competitions every year from age 7 to 13. I’ve danced and did gymnastics for a brief time, and now I cheer with a community team. All of these activities are fun, and it felt great whenever I succeeded at them. And it felt awful whenever I lost or didn’t perform as well as I wanted to. Most athletes are perfectionists. They are disciplined and ambitious. If they mess up, they’re already going to be hard on themselves. They do not need the public’s judgment or non-constructive criticism, especially when the majority of the public does not play that sport competitively, or play that sport at all.
However, because we are so focused on winning and success, we praise athletes who perform even when they’re injured or hurt. I’ve dealt with knee pain since middle school, over half of my life, and I don’t think I ever sat out a game voluntarily. I didn’t want to look weak nor miss out on the opportunity to play. In college, I had an ATV accident over spring break and ended up scarring a muscle in my calf. However, I didn’t go to the doctor to figure that out until after I went to ballet class and noticed my foot swelling up in (and out of) my slipper. My leg had been hurting, but I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines or make a big deal out of it, so I “powered through” until I couldn’t minimize the injury anymore.
The pressure to succeed doesn’t just lead athletes to perform while injured, the drive itself will physically hurt them. I had a track teammate who would get so nervous at meets they would vomit before their races. I had gymnast friends who were consistently in and out of casts, boots, and braces for years. An old teammate had to quit field hockey because she had too many concussions due to accidentally getting hit by a pop-up ball, or being whacked by someone mid-swing. She had to stop or else risk permanent brain damage. Another teammate ended up collapsing during a game and needed intensive surgery for her knee. And another tore both of her ACLs within a year. These all happened before we were 18, sometimes before we were even 15 or 16. But we’re seen as tough when we “play our hearts out” and give it our all.
Our coaches were right to push us to do our best and be disciplined, but the ones that were actually smart made sure we never felt overwhelmed or depleted, physically or mentally. For example, conditioning in the Southeast’s extreme humidity before the season started so we would be acclimated to it by the first game: okay. Not letting us take any water breaks or sit out if we needed a minute to recover: not okay (for the record, no one banned water breaks. Our school’s coaches always allowed us, and encouraged us to take breaks if we needed them). Our high school athletic director was amazing at protecting us. If the temperature rose above a certain degree, everything had to be moved indoors; no exceptions. She would take forever to clear you if you had an injury. And if we heard thunder, our coaches had to move us inside or else face harsh reprimanding. As students, we all would get annoyed with the AD because she was so strict, but now as adults, we realize how good she was at her job.
In the end, the criticism towards Biles and Osaka, and the pressure for all athletes to compete no matter what, is rooted in financial gain. Sports champions make money- not just for themselves, but for companies and the sport itself. If an athlete gains a lot of attention, that means better tv ratings, online SEO (search engine optimization), and press coverage. And that leads to more corporate sponsorships and advertisers. We have a lack of concern for the well-being of athletes of all levels because they can earn this funding for the networks.
College athletes bring in money for their school. They attract donors and seasons ticket owners. High school athletes bring in ticket revenue, recognition to the school, and individually, their performance can earn them athletic scholarships. An athletic scholarship might be the only foreseeable way a student can afford to attend college. This means their high school performance can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for them. Once they start attending college, they need to perform all four years in order to keep the tuition payments. And depending on their sport, the college might allow them to prioritize their training and competitions over their coursework because their performance can bring in money. And now that the NCAA has allowed college athletes to accept sponsorships, there will be more pressure on them to stand out for the possibility of earning supplemental income. A lucrative sponsorship can ensure that they receive some form of financial compensation for their work, instead of relying on the slim possibility they will be drafted.
This “work no matter what” mentally has trickled down to the everyday American. We feel a need to commodify our abilities because we need to constantly be making money. Things that don’t earn you an income, but you do because they are enjoyable and life-giving (the mythical “hobbies”), are seen as a luxury that only the wealthy (who have most certainly done their fair share of hard work) can enjoy. However, every athlete should say, if asked why they compete, that they compete because they love the sport. Because when they reach a certain level professionally, the money doesn’t pay off the potential lifelong damage overcommitting can do to their mental and physical health and other irreplaceable things in their lives.
Osaka and Biles are not only taking care of themselves, they protesting against America’s idolization of productivity, success, and wealth. They are letting the public know that they are aware of their own worth. They know that they are incredible athletes, as they have proven over and over again. And they know that their worth is not in their achievements, but in just being who God made them to be. And they know, as adults, that they have the right to make these choices.
The criticism these athletes have received also comes down to race. Rashford, Sancho, Saka, Osaka, and Biles are all Black. While they are all a racial minority in their respective sports, in popular American sports such as football and basketball, Black athletes make up the majority. The NFL and NBA make millions (maybe even billions?) each season, filling the pockets of billionaire owners. NCAA football and basketball get incredible ratings each season. Black people are creating this revenue. The same goes for the Olympics. NBC’s ratings heavily depended on Biles. Each of the Grand Slam tennis tournaments relies a heavy amount on Osaka and other successful Black tennis players like Serena and Venus Williams. When these athletes say they need to step away, they are not operating according to the “work hard and you can achieve anything,” meritocracy myth embedded in American capitalist values. They’re expressing autonomy and self-determination, which until less than 60 years ago, were legally privileges only for white Americans.
The common denominator between the majority of sports careers is brevity. More than likely, a professional athlete’s performing career is over before they turn 30 or 35. For gymnasts, you’re lucky if you make it past 22. There are the possibilities of coaching, training, or commentating, but it doesn’t change the fact that competing will most likely only take up a fraction of your life. The way athletics are run, the athlete unfortunately is the most disposable part of the machine. They are the ones making the most sacrifices while risking having their dreams swept from underneath them with one bad season, game, or injury. The ones who make a long-term career and build wealth off of the athletes’ labor are the schools, athletic departments, athletic directors, general managers, and team owners.
When we examine that unbalance of capital in the sports industry, it’s hard to not compare athletics to sharecropping, which itself was just another form of slavery once slavery was abolished. Athletes give up their bodies with no guarantee that their work will pay off. But more so, this can be compared to our economy today. Jobs in factories, on farms, in warehouses, or the food service industry, etc. all require intense manual labor that we categorize as “blue-collar jobs,” while earning a fraction of what the (majority-white) company CEOs earn. These jobs are already looked down upon as being “less than” and “easy.” These workers are worked to a breaking point for minimal wages, but if they push back and quit, they’re reprimanded because “how could they not handle a simple blue-collar job?”
Just thinking about this makes my own head hurt. The silver lining I hold onto, while we continue to speak out and work to balance the scales in our country, is that Black people know how hard they work. Despite the criticism and harassment, we know as a community, hard work is passed down from generation to generation. No matter if you are an Olympic athlete like Biles or a cashier for a grocery store, you work hard to make your living because you know that, as a Black person in this country, you need to.
Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles know how hard they’ve worked to achieve what they have, and they don’t need others to validate that. Asserting your worth in front of the entire world is tough. It requires strength to go against expectations and trust what is right for you. It takes strength to take action toward protecting your mental and physical health. We were not meant to run ourselves ragged in work. And we need to stop making stress a badge of honor. Consistent hard work is good, but consistent overworking can create long-lasting damage that, ironically, takes years of work to undo. I realize that it’s a privilege to be able to step away from their work for a prolonged mental health break; one that many Americans cannot afford to do. This is why we need to stop judging each other for mental healthcare and instead actively support each other. It’s so much easier to take even just an hour for yourself when you have a support system. Usually, people are more than willing to help you out if you just ask them, or they will help find someone for you if they aren’t available themselves. If you know that you would try to help out one of your peers when they needed it, most likely they would do the same for you.
Overall, I’ve realized that people like Piers Morgan are mad at those who are actively prioritizing their mental health because Morgan and others probably have never felt like they could prioritize their own mental healthcare. Their anger comes from resentment, not their sense of superior morals and worth ethic. It also may come from loneliness and isolation. If they don’t feel like they can be vulnerable with a friend or family member and ask for help, they are likely to judge those who do have a support system, out of bitterness and envy. Hopefully, they can learn to be kinder to themselves, kinder to others, communicate better with their loved ones, and one day start taking care of their own mental wellbeing.