It’s a small miracle. This Thursday, August 8, in the majestic setting of the Château de Versailles, Elodie Clouvel will take part in the first modern pentathlon fencing events – a discipline that combines fencing, swimming, horse riding, shooting and running. The presence of the thirty-year-old at these 2024 Olympic Games is more than symbolic: last year, the woman who won the silver medal in Rio suffered from burnout, something that is not well known among high-level athletes. “I went down very deep. I suffered, and that’s an understatement. I was empty. I didn’t want to do anything anymore. Everything was foggy,” she confided to our colleagues at The Teamin December 2023. Contributing greatly to freeing up speech on this still taboo subject, Elodie Clouvel has repeatedly spoken in the press of her great weariness, to the point of describing herself as a “zombie”, deprived of sleep and desire.
With one year to go before the Olympics, the athlete even considered ending her career, before getting back in the saddle, accompanied by sports psychologist Meriem Salmi, who also coaches great champions such as judoka Teddy Riner and fencer Ysaora Thibus. To get off on the right foot, the pentathlete decided last fall to leave the National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (Insep) where she had been training for fifteen years, in order to train at her own pace. Although she still attends Insep, particularly to train in fencing, Elodie Clouvel also shares her schedule with other coaches and organizations, and counts on those close to her, such as her pentathlete partner Valentin Belaud or her father, to advise her on shooting or running. “I am my conductor. I don’t want anyone to force themselves on me,” the athlete explains to The TeamThis choice of independence, rare and radical, would have allowed him to bounce back after a long period of questioning.
“It can destroy you”
The young woman is far from being the only Olympic athlete to have spoken of a slow descent into hell following overly intensive training or too much media exposure. In 2013, Teddy Riner was one of the first French people to confide on the subject, evoking his discouragement after the European Championships in Hungary – during which he had nevertheless won the gold medal in the over 100 kilos. Around the same time, international stars such as Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe and American Michael Phelps also communicated about their psychological difficulties. More recently, multi-medal winning gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from the team gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Olympics, before withdrawing from the prestigious all-around competition scheduled for the following day. At the age of 24, the American spoke of the need to “face her demons” and “focus on her mental health”.
No discipline seems to be spared from this burnout epidemic: swimmers Camille Lacourt, Béryl Gastaldello and Léon Marchand have all raised the subject, as have fencer Ysaora Thibus, judoka Amandine Buchard and handball player Valentin Porte. For a long time, however, these symptoms were kept quiet by athletes, their entourage and their federations. Far from the fantasies of power and invincibility that surround very high-level sport, the notion of “burnout” simply had no place in the very demanding criteria of the sector. Odiah Sidibé, 4 x 100-metre relay world champion in 2003 and two-time Olympic participant (1992 and 1996), remembers the weight of this taboo. At the time, she was one of the first Olympic athletes to call on a psychologist to manage her stress. “I was in the middle of my career, and there was a huge weight on my shoulders. I was afraid of disappointing my coach, my entourage, the public, the media. You have to know how to manage, otherwise, it can destroy you,” she confided to L’Express. But at the time, the reactions around the young woman were rather cold, even downright icy. “I was told that shrinks were for crazy people. That it was a waste of time, and that it served no purpose,” the sprinter remembers. “However, this psychological support was essential, especially during the major transitions in my career. When, from one day to the next, there is no more media, no more sign of life from the Federation, no more competitions, it can be very hard. Many have gained weight, fallen into drugs or alcohol… You have to be prepared for all that,” she pleads.
“We shouldn’t have made too much noise”
Marie-Laure Brunet, too, has long suffered from this lack of psychological support for high-level athletes. In 2014, images of the malaise she suffered in the middle of her women’s biathlon relay race at the Sochi Winter Games in Russia went around the world. This live collapse was, however, the end point of a long obstacle course, which everyone had felt coming – without really taking it into account. “Since 2011, I had started to feel the signs of overtraining. But I compensated mentally, and I put a sort of lid of denial on it,” says the athlete, ten years later. At the time, she remembers the signals sent by her exhausted body: pain when climbing the simple steps of a staircase, difficulty falling asleep, a “loss of joy for everything”. The year before Sochi, the athlete underwent a series of tests and medical check-ups, which confirmed physical exhaustion. “Everyone knew, but we decided to act as if nothing had happened. No one supported me psychologically, or even offered help in that regard. In hindsight, it could perhaps have changed a lot of things,” she believes.
After her fall, Marie-Laure Brunet began therapy on her own, and quickly understood that her body had reached a point of no return. “I felt it, and I made the decision to end my career. But again, I didn’t have any support. I couldn’t make too much noise,” she sums up. A decade later, the athlete is at peace, has trained as a mental trainer at Insep, and supports “between 15 and 20 athletes”, including some Olympic athletes. When she reads or hears the testimonies of the “new generation” on the subject of their mental health, she congratulates herself on “their maturity and courage”. “These 2024 Games are doing a lot of good. The world of sport is beginning to understand that the psychological aspect is at the heart of everything, and that you have to know how to listen to yourself”, she argues.
The same assessment goes for Emmie Charayron, three-time French short-distance triathlon champion, ranked 18th at the London Olympics in 2012. Recently retrained as a mental trainer, the thirty-year-old is delighted that “mental coaches, federations and educators are increasingly interested in the psychological health of their athletes”. It must be said that the athlete has not really been so lucky: during her career, she says she has been affected several times by depressive episodes, often at the time of major transitions such as changes of coaches or participation in the Olympic Games. “An athlete is under constant pressure: this was the case when I qualified for the 2016 Games. We were often reminded that if we were not up to standard, no French woman would be sent to Rio”, recalls the Lyonnaise.
To give herself every chance, she multiplied her training, challenges, races – until one too many. During a final qualification before the 2016 Games, Emmie Charayron completed her race, but was injured. She was diagnosed with a femoral hernia, which required an operation. “I was not referred by anyone for psychological help, I had no support, and they simply concluded that I would not be able to go to the Games. I then hit rock bottom,” she sighs. But at the time, she herself did not think about getting psychological support: “It was not in the codes, it simply did not cross my mind. When you think about it, we have come a long way from this issue in France.”
“It going”
In the Federations, the numerous positions taken by athletes, particularly since the Tokyo Games in 2021, are gradually changing things. At the French Volleyball Federation (FFV), a psychologist has been made available to athletes who want one since 2021 and the gold medal won by the Blues in the final against the Russians. “We wanted to help the team absorb the Olympic title. It was something huge, which could have caused an equally intense descent,” analyzes Axelle Guiguet, national technical director (DTN) of the FFV. “It happened little by little: one player went to see a psychologist, then two, then word of mouth worked. And now, I would say that 80% of the team and staff work or have worked with the psychologist,” assures the DTN.
The same awareness is being expressed at Insep, where six psychologists are currently working with athletes who wish to do so and their teams – “compared to just one a few years ago”, confides Anaëlle Malherbe, a clinical psychologist at the Institute. In ten years, the specialist has observed “a huge evolution on these issues”, on the part of the athletes themselves and their coaches. “We have more and more individualized follow-ups in the more or less long term, we help them find solutions for themselves, to regain a certain mental balance”, she explains. Mental trainers are also increasingly numerous in offering their services to athletes. “Some federations have long understood the interest in working on mental health, others are a little less sensitive. But it is progressing, and the results easily convince the most skeptical to try”, summarizes Anaëlle Malherbe. Like Teddy Riner, followed for more than ten years by Meriem Salmi, and who has just won his third individual Olympic gold medal and his second team gold medal.
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