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mikaela shiffrin is a reminder that elite athletes are normal people and not immune to mental health issues

'i'd feel like i had to gag or like my throat was closing and i couldn't breathe anymore,' the olympic gold medalist says of her struggles with performance anxiety.

by maija kappler

published feb 10, 2022

last updated feb 11, 2022

5 minute read

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5 minute read

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mikaela shiffrin is a reminder that elite athletes have mental health concerns, too

a teammate consoles skiier mikaela shiffrin after her fall during the slalom at the beijing olympics on tuesday. (robert f. bukaty / ap)

mikaela shiffrin is 26. she works very hard and is an immensely talented skier with 47 world cup victories and an olympic gold medal. this week, when she made a mistake doing something most of us could never even come close to, her humiliation was broadcast on tv. cameras lingered on shiffrin’s hunched figure long after she fell during the slalom course, disqualifying her from her two best events. nbc broadcasted her emotional response for nearly 20 minutes. she fought back tears in an interview, where she told reporters, “i won’t ever get over this.”

it can be easy to forget, watching the olympics, that athletes with enormous talent are also just people — and that they’re under an enormous amount of pressure.

“stress-related illnesses are extremely common in professional sports, and they are becoming more so as the pressures on athletes increase,” dr. barry cripps, chairman of the sports and exercise division of the british psychological society, told the independent. “the expectations are enormous and sometimes people cannot handle it.”

in 2018, the international olympic committee published a report that found elite athletes experience depression at roughly the same rate as the general population — but the difference is that these athletes are less likely to recognize or acknowledge their depressive symptoms. depression also seems more common in individual athletes than people who play team sports.

both depression and anxiety are more common in people with maladaptive perfectionism — people who are highly self-conscious and who tend to have very negative reactions when things don’t go as planned. that kind of mindset can be hard to avoid in sports, although, of course, it isn’t a productive one: while some elite sports “require athletes to achieve perfect performance outcomes, the tendency to be characterized by perfectionistic personality traits and to be cognitively preoccupied with the attainment of perfection often undermines performance and fosters a sense of dissatisfaction with performance,” a 2005 canadian study found.

shiffrin has spoken about her experiences with performance anxiety before. she competed at the 2014 olympics in sochi, russia when she was only 18, and broke records as the youngest-ever gold medal winner of the tricky slalom competition. from the outside, her olympic performance looked like a victory, plain and simple — but her actual experience was much more complicated.

‘i’d feel like my throat was closing’

“i would get to the start, and totally freeze. my eyes would start watering. i’d feel like i had to gag or like my throat was closing and i couldn’t breathe anymore. this happened almost every single race,” shiffrin told people magazine in 2020. “i never expected that i would be somebody who was completely petrified by pressure and by performance anxiety. but i went through a phase of that, and i had to learn how to control my mind and my emotions and stress.”

her father also died two years ago, almost to the day of the slalom event. it’s her first olympics without him, and after his death, she questioned whether she wanted to quit skiing altogether.

still, shiffrin does appear to have a solid support system around her. her boyfriend aleksander kilde, a skier from norway who’s also competing at the olympics, posted a supportive message on social media. he’s frustrated at people who lack compassion in how they talk about shiffrin’s performance, he wrote, because “all i see is a top athlete doing what a top athlete does! it’s a part of the game and it happens. the pressure we all put on individuals in the sports are enormous.”

my hope for every human is that they
find another human who finds a way to
love, understand, and heal them in the way @aleksanderkilde has done and
continues to for me ❤️ https://t.co/sdrtptur4r
— mikaela shiffrin (@mikaelashiffrin) february 9, 2022

shiffrin’s apparent anxiety this week is reminiscent of simone biles, the superstar american gymnast, who pulled out of an olympic final last summer to focus on her mental health. on tuesday, biles tweeted a message of compassion to shiffrin.

🤍🤍🤍 @mikaelashiffrin
— simone biles (@simone_biles) february 9, 2022

“after the performance i did, i just didn’t want to go on,” biles told reporters in july. “i have to focus on my mental health and well-being. i just think mental health is more prevalent in sports right now…. we have to protect our minds and our bodies and not just go out and do what the world wants us to do.”

that move — especially by someone as high-profile as biles — was inspiring to many other athletes.

“what simone biles did was just so strong and such a strong message for all of us, just to know that it’s ok to not be ok,” anna gasser, a gold medal-winning snowboarder from austria, told the new york times this week. “i feel like it was a game changer. simone biles’s message was that we’re not just athletes — that we are also humans and not robots.”

biles, for her part, said she had been inspired by naomi osaka, the tennis player who withdrew from the french open last spring after being penalized for stating she didn’t want to do post-match interviews due to their mental health toll.

“i’ve often felt that people have no regard for athletes’ [sic] mental health and this rings very true when i see a press conference or partake in one,” osaka wrote on social media at the time. “we’re often sat there and asked questions that we’ve been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and i’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me.”

she continued, “i’ve watched many clips of athletes breaking down after a loss in the press room and i know you have as well,” she went on. “i believe that whole situation is kicking a person while they’re down and i don’t understand the reasoning behind it.”

there are a number of ways authorities can try to safeguard athletes’ health, according to the 2018 ioc statement. an understanding coach is key, since a coach tends to be the person an athlete spends the most time with, as well as the person who develops the training schedule and sets goals. it can also be helpful to focus on improvement over wins, which can help the athlete with “resilience, psychological flexibility, self-compassion and adaptation to situational demands.”

sports governing bodies can help by offering mental health training and resources to coaches as well as athletes, the report said. it also indicated that speaking openly about mental health in the way shiffrin, biles and osaka have done can help lots of other people.

“ultimately, sport can positively influence society to promote well-being and de-stigmatize mental health help-seeking.”

maija kappler is a reporter and editor at healthing. you can reach her at mkappler@postmedia.com

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mikaela shiffrin is a reminder that elite athletes are normal people and not immune to mental health issues

'i'd feel like i had to gag or like my throat was closing and i couldn't breathe anymore,' the olympic gold medalist says of her struggles with performance anxiety.

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‘i’d feel like my throat was closing’

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mikaela shiffrin is a reminder that elite athletes are normal people and not immune to mental health issues

'i'd feel like i had to gag or like my throat was closing and i couldn't breathe anymore,' the olympic gold medalist says of her struggles with performance anxiety.

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