Mental health in sport: Self-worth and the weight of expectation

The adoration of cheering fans. The ecstasy of bringing glory to club or country. The satisfaction when all the training and preparation pay off.Until recently, much of the focus on gaining those rewards has been on the physical effort needed.

“We’re coming off a year when we don’t have . These top athletes are put in a situation where they have no control. The routine, the scheduling, the practice that has led them to success is all crumpled up and thrown into the bin,” he said.Mr Chay, who coaches Paralympic swimmer Yip Pin Xiu, said coaches and athletes use competitions to track their progress and their competitors’. But this is hard in a pandemic without various competitions leading up to the Olympics.

Then there is the mental burden of not wanting to let down sponsors, added Mr Chay, who’s also an ex-national swimmer who represented Singapore internationally from 1997 to 2005. Ms Lim Prasad told CNA she recognised how much effort had gone into just getting her to the starting line. “As an athlete, there’s always a lot of expectations you put on yourself. You can always tell yourself, don’t listen to the media, don’t listen to other people. But that voice in your head is the hardest to rid.”These various expectations put immense pressure on an athlete, shared Dr Tham.

“Very often as athletes we tie our self-worth to our sporting performance. That’s something I’ve been burnt by doing before, and I’m in the process of slowly learning to separate it,” shared Ms Yip. Athletes spend “80 to 90 per cent” of time in training, so the key is to replicate what they do in training in the competition, he said.It is what Ms Aisyah did during the qualifying race for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Six rowers were competing for one spot, which she eventually won, but she remembered “not thinking about winning that race”.

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