WHEN THE RACE IS RUN

Chasing an Olympic dream is so all-consuming many athletes struggle with their mental health in the aftermath of the Games.

- RENE RYALL

For many athletes, going to the Olympics is like climbing a mountain that few have ever tackled. It's going to be tough, and possibly scary. And if you don't quite make it to the top, you're going to be a bit gutted. It takes courage to accept that. That, at least, is how High-Performance Sport New Zealand psychologist Campbell Thompson sees it.

A post-Olympic dip is common, he says. A long-held goal, often a childhood dream, comes at the price of years of hard work and sacrifice. Once the flame is extinguished, athletes can find themselves in darkness.

Olympic rower Eve Macfarlane hit rock bottom after the Rio Olympics in 2016. Perhaps it is another part of the struggle many athletes face, particularly at elite level: how to embody a life and identity outside sport.

"It was never, 'This is Eve. She's a beautiful person, Macfarlane says. “It was always "This is Eve. She's a rower?"

Macfarlane and her doubles partner, Zoe Stevenson, went to Rio as world champions, and favourites for gold. When that didn't happen, Macfarlane fell apart. “I remember just absolutely bawling my eyes out behind the grandstand.”

Following Rio, she decided to take time out of the sport. She and her life partner moved from Cambridge to Raglan, and at first she revelled in doing all the things she couldn't when she was training. But the post-Olympic blues soon took hold, then spiralled into something much deeper and darker.

"I didn't even want to socialise and go outside. I'd cry all the time. I got really lazy and lethargic, and the biggest warning sign to me was that I didn't want to do the things that I knew that I loved, like going for a surf.

I was just not enjoying it at all. And I was like, 'These are beautiful waves. Why am I not enjoying this? What is wrong?'"