Tokyo Olympics 2021: Preparing in a Pandemic

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Nicole Militello:

You're listening to RadioEd.

Lorne Fultonberg:

A University of Denver podcast.

Nicole Militello:

We're your hosts, Nicole Militello.

Alyssa Hurst:

Alyssa Hurst.

Lorne Fultonberg:

And I'm Lorne Fultonberg. Add the Olympics to that never-ending list of things that have looked a little strange during the Coronavirus pandemic. What was supposed to be Tokyo 2020 became Tokyo 2021, throwing a major wrench into the travel and training plans of thousands of athletes across the globe. Gym's closed, major competitions were canceled, and a grueling four years of preparation suddenly became five. But, the International Olympic Committee has decided, beginning Friday the show will go on, even if there's no one in the audience. Coming up, team USA's director of mental health services tells us about the physical and mental toll this has all taken on the country's strongest athletes. But we're going to start with a first person experience from an athlete training for what was likely to be her very last Paralympic games. Lacey Henderson is a DU alumna, who holds the U.S. record in the long jump. She competed in Rio in 2016, and had her sights set on Tokyo. She takes us through all the ups and downs of her pandemic prep, and told us what it was like when her training came to an abrupt halt.

Lacey Henderson:

I almost feel guilty, I felt relief to be honest. So, when things were getting questionable there for a second, the world was shutting down. I was having an issue, I moved from Texas back to Denver because I couldn't get to facilities. And, when COVID was really hitting hard, all of the tracks were getting locked up. I couldn't go to the weight room.

Lorne Fultonberg:

You were in your brother's garage?

Lacey Henderson:

I was in my brother's garage. Yeah, that was when the gyms and everything shut down. And he had a gym in his garage at the time. And, we were like, "Well, if we can't run a track, maybe we can lift." And he was close to a track that just was open. They didn't have any gates, which is great.

Lorne Fultonberg:

You've been through plenty of adversity and plenty of changes in your life. How did it feel for you when they said, "Tokyo is in jeopardy."

Lacey Henderson:

The majority of us know what it's like to be very resourceful, to have to make moves just to find a track, to have to make moves just to find facilities. So, it was fun at first, but it's not ideal. That is another compounded stress where it's, if you don't have a consistent training setup where you can just show up every day, when you have to put in the mental effort and fortitude just thinking about where can I go? Is it going to be open? What are the hours, if it's open? Stuff like that. It really is taxing on you, overall.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Tell me a little bit about leading up to the Olympic Trials.

Lacey Henderson:

So coming into Trials, the preparation was, I mean, it was pretty much the same as any other prepare Olympic quad. The preparation was there, the training was there. We had done the heavy volume, the fitness was there. Everything was polished off like a diamond. However, track meets and most competitions in general, thanks to COVID, looked and felt very, very different. We were at a lower profile high school track and field. We didn't have a proper runway. A lot of people had to shorten their approaches in long jump. A lot of throwers were throwing in softball fields. It was nuts. There's just so many things out of your control. And COVID really brought that to light, that all you can do is really just try as best as you can, and hope that the sport gods may shine light upon you, because that's really what it comes down to in most aspects.

Lacey Henderson:

It's hard to perform. It's hard to perform when your mind is constantly trying to problem solve it. When you're forcing your brain to function that way for a really long time, you just burn out, it just completely burns out. And it's really hard to maintain, because this is where motivation comes from. This is where the perseverance part comes from. But, it's usually very short. And I think all of the cliche, I don't know, good storytelling ways of finding motivation and pushing through, those don't work when it comes to how hard it is for a very, very long time. And, what it really comes down to is like... And for me, what it has really come down to is turning my brain off, putting one foot in front of the other, just showing up on the track, and just powering through in a way that isn't really noble, just in a way to just keep moving.

Lorne Fultonberg:

That was Lacey Henderson, U.S. Paralympic hopeful. She's team USA's first alternate for the games next month. Behind Lacey, and every Olympic hopeful is a team of supporters, family, friends, coaches, trainers, and increasingly mental health professionals. Facing COVID, athletes increasingly turned to people like Jess Bartley. She's a clinical assistant professor in the Graduate School of Professional Psychology. And, as of September the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic committees, director of mental health services. She gave us an idea of how COVID could change athletic training for years to come. And gives us an inside look at what team USA athletes had to deal with.

Jess Bartley:

Watching the athletes struggle to change training routines, to understand isolation, understand their emotions, understand everything that's coming along with COVID has been really interesting. There's a lot of athletes who delayed their lives for an additional year. There's some athletes who decided to just go ahead and call it, "I don't think I can make it another year." We've had a number of younger athletes age into the process, who would have never made Tokyo 2020. And are now going to the games to represent team USA this year. So there's been a combination of things that have come up through COVID and just delaying the games a year, with the training, with the mindset, even the athletes we have going, has been incredible to watch all of these athletes struggle through training.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Yeah. What is the difference between four years and five years when you're training for Olympics?

Jess Bartley:

Oh, it's huge. Again, you put anything and everything you have into training. And so, I know that there was athletes who put off graduate school, put off college another year, put off starting a family. Just big decisions, big moves. That was really, really tough to sort through, when you had four whole years to aim for this one event. And now, it's another year. And so, just to understand what that entire year would mean, not even knowing if they would qualify. And I think that happened to quite a few of our veterans, who toughed it out for one more year and it just didn't happen.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Right. Both physically and mentally it's a struggle.

Jess Bartley:

Right. For sure.

Lorne Fultonberg:

How does the uncertainty of Tokyo 2020, Tokyo 2021 Tokyo maybe never, play into this struggle?

Jess Bartley:

Yeah, I think the uncertainty was one of the harder pieces for athletes to wrap their head around is... We had the games delayed, but I think that if you were to rewind a little bit, that means qualifications were delayed, that means that qualifications were changed. So, there were particular events that never occurred, because we couldn't make it happen with COVID.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Like what?

Jess Bartley:

There were international events where you would get points that allowed you to qualify. There were different rankings. So, you knew you had three more competitions to potentially improve in your rankings and qualify. Now you only had one, or maybe none, and they just called the points. So, lots of very unique qualifications, and we're using events from two and three years ago because it's the best we had. So if you performed your best in 2019, you could be going to represent team USA. There's others that just fit in one last fit event that was all or nothing. So there's a lot of different sports who did qualifications in very different ways.

Lorne Fultonberg:

You joined the USOPC in September 2020, full time, as director of mental health services. And I understand that's a role that has not existed before you.

Jess Bartley:

Correct. Yeah.

Lorne Fultonberg:

What is your job exactly?

Jess Bartley:

Yeah. So, I was building on years and years of sports psychology. So, we were really supporting athletes around mental performance, and some around mental health. But our sports psychologists travel, there with these teams 24/7. And, it often made it difficult to support athletes in an ongoing way. And support the athletes who perhaps are not going to the games, or that are retiring. And so, there was different ways of thinking about how we wanted to support the athletes as a whole person. So, how do we support them during injury? How do we support them in different phases of their life? And so, those were some of the things we have started to work on. We created a external mental health task force. So, that has been about a year and a half now. And one of their very first directives was to hire a director of mental health. The other was to have mental health officers at the game. So those were the two things that started simultaneously. And of course COVID... So, that delayed the mental health officers.

Jess Bartley:

But, when I came on in September, I was able to really focus on crisis. So, we looked at all of the mental health crises that could be coming up with athletes as they were struggling with COVID, or just in general. So they get cut from a team, they're injured, all of the times when their mental health might be a little bit worse than normal. And so, we created a mental health emergency action plan. We also created a 24/7 team USA mental health support line. And so, we have a 24/7 support line, where the athletes can call and always connect with a mental health provider. Gosh, the number of times we had athletes who went into Trials, tested positive for COVID, they're done, they're out.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Jess Bartley:

And so, to have those support systems in place in the moment was really, really helpful. So crisis was really the first one. Then we ended up doing a lot of individual services so, "How can our athletes have access to remote therapy, therapy in-person?" Especially, as we start to open up after COVID. We have support groups. And so, we've had a number of support groups that we are standing up with athletes who don't qualify for the games. We have athletes who are in support groups if they've been injured. We actually have a support group for all of the moms who are going to the games. And so, we have a number of moms who will be competing in Tokyo. And so, wanting to get this group of women together, to understand what the resources are, understand how hard it's going to be to potentially be away from their babies, families. So, we're trying to come up with all of these safety nuts under athletes, and understand when they struggle, how we can support them.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Right. Right. And I saw that it's not just COVID, swimmer Simone Manuel, who won the Golden Rio in 2016, and then was on the verge of not qualifying. I know she's talked about how difficult it's been in the social climate of being black in the United States with everything that's gone on.

Jess Bartley:

Yes. I think we've thought about it as a dual pandemic. So, along with my position, we actually hired a director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So, I've worked really closely with her around how we support athletes of color, marginalized athletes. In the past couple of years, it was historically the USOC, the United States Olympic Committee. And it is now the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. So, we've really embraced our Paralympians, in working to support those athletes as well.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I know COVID has had a drastic effect on everyone. I saw some statistics from the CDC that, especially for people ages 18 to 25, people who normally struggle with mental health, it's normally 30%. And it was 78% during COVID.

Jess Bartley:

Yeah.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Is COVID what spurred the creation of your role in this increased focus from USOPC?

Jess Bartley:

No. So my role was coming to fruition long before COVID hit. I think, they really were just trying to understand what our athletes need. So, before I came on board, not only did we start to include the USOPC, and include Paralympians in the mission of the organization, we also added to our mission statement, sustained well-being. And so, it's performance excellence and sustained well-being and started to think in a more holistic way about our athletes and what they might need to be able to perform and to compete at their best. And so, they created a whole division called athlete services. And so, athlete services are very comprehensive. We're looking at the entire lifespan of team USA athletes, anywhere from onboarding, making the team, injury throughout, any of the things that could come up in an athlete's career to even the post... The retirement, post games, things like that. So, just being able to understand that an athlete as a whole person. And just try to understand how we can support them best.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Yeah. It seems like there's really a new understanding of the way mental health impacts competitive sports at all levels. I read an op-ed, or an opinion piece in the Washington post that you're quoted in. And we'll link to that in the show notes too. But, you said, "We're having to change the definition of mental toughness." I'm curious what the definition was before and what you see it as now.

Jess Bartley:

I think, we've had this idea that toughing it out, or pushing through it was mental toughness. And actually, when you start to look at the science and the data behind that, that doesn't necessarily equate to better performance. And I think that, that's been what a lot of, whether it be coaches or staff, administrators, or athletes themselves have really thought, is push through it, that makes you stronger. What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. And, we're actually learning how tough it is to be vulnerable, and to really understand, "Okay, I'm struggling right now. How do I get those resources? How do I push through this, and with it, and understand what's going on, in a way that will make me a better athlete and a better person?"

Lorne Fultonberg:

We're starting to see more and more of these athletes come forward about the struggles that they're having. Simone Manuel, who I mentioned earlier, Simone Biles, the gymnast has mentioned it. And, in the tennis world, Naomi Osaka recently got some headlines for pulling out of the French Open, because of the mental burden of competing. And then, talking with the news media afterwards. Why do you think more and more athletes are going public with this struggle? And what effect does it have?

Jess Bartley:

I think that the more athletes come out to speak on mental health, the more we're going to de-stigmatize it. I feel like sport is often a vehicle for social change. And I think that it really could push society forward, if we continue to have celebrities and notable athletes come out to speak about their mental health, because the reality is, our entire society and our entire world is struggling with mental health. I think it's important to note everyone has mental health. You're not necessarily going to be diagnosed with a mental illness. Those are actually really different.

Jess Bartley:

But everyone has mental health. And so, do you have good mental health, poor mental health? How are you taking care of your health, mentally? It's really important to know that everyone's going to have ups and downs. Everyone's going to struggle at times, whether that's the death of a loved one, whether that's COVID, whether it's what's going on around social justice and black lives matter, Asian hate, there's so many times that people struggle. And it's important to just acknowledge that, and give the appropriate support that you would a physical injury. I think that's going to be important to really break down that stigma.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Yeah. You work with the best of the best, the most fit athletes in the world. I'm curious how you've noticed mental health awareness branching out from that to less competitive sports, amateur sports, youth sports.

Jess Bartley:

Yeah, I think that the more the notable athletes, and as I mentioned, celebrities are talking about mental health, the more it is okay to trickle down, to youths sport, or to trickle down to society as a whole. I think that you see somebody in the spotlight who is able to say, "I'm really struggling." Or, "COVID's been really hard. It's been hard to train." I think that really normalizes it, and it normalizes it for the entire population, that there are going to be hard days, and there's times that you go to work anyways, or you do something anyways. But you can also admit that it's hard. Come up with strategies, I think that we can continue to normalize.

Lorne Fultonberg:

For a lot of these athletes and the people watching them, there's this thrill of competition, the fans going wild. We're not having fans in Tokyo this year. Does that have any psychological effect on athletes?

Jess Bartley:

The majority of athletes I've spoken to, and I alluded to this before, it's the uncertainty. And so, when they named that there would be no spectators back in the spring. I think it was like, "Great. No spectators. Okay, now I can push forward and understand what this is going to look like." We have a number of ways of supporting athletes virtually, it's not ideal. But I think that was actually the piece that I heard the most often from the athletes is, "Okay. That was the decision that was made. This is how it's going to be. And now I can work with these circumstances." It was actually, I think, a little bit unnerving to say, "Oh. Now there's going to be Japanese spectators." And then, "Oh. Nevermind, no Japanese spectators."

Jess Bartley:

So, the back and forth has actually been much more stressful, in my opinion, than actually knowing things are going to be one way or the other. I think it's still going to be difficult in my opinion. But again, now that it's certain, and we can start to plan for the ways that athletes can connect with their support system virtually, great we know how it's going to be. But I think the more things that we can get that are certain for the athletes, the better. In my experience, this is a very regimented and routine group of human beings. So again, the certainty piece is going to be key there.

Lorne Fultonberg:

That's interesting. So even a detail that is theoretically not tied to an athlete's physical preparation, or their performance has an impact on the way they prepare.

Jess Bartley:

For sure. And I think there's all kinds of tools, whether it's imagery, visualization, we've used some virtual reality to prepare athletes for what it is going to be like. And so, we're using those tools, and then we're having to change them, and change them again. And athletes are having to be very creative. But I think once things are a little bit more certain that can often lead to a little bit more certainty around their performance.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Last summer, I'm pretty sure HBO released this documentary called the Weight of Gold, Michael Phelps narrates it. And it has a bunch of former and current Olympic athletes. And it's talking about this post Olympic depression that exists.

Jess Bartley:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lorne Fultonberg:

And Michael Phelps says that at least 80% of athletes go through some sort of post Olympic depression. I'm wondering, since you mentioned this earlier, what post Olympic depression looks like. And then, how we help those athletes.

Jess Bartley:

Yeah. From the athletes who I've been around working with post games, it's really tough to be at the top of your game. Maybe you did better than you thought. Maybe you did worse than you thought. But you had these expectations around this one event. And it's again, for the Olympics and the Paralympics, it's four years and this time five years. So, you're often riding this high, and there's all of these emotions, there's a lot of adrenaline going. And, for most of what we're trying to understand, there is this post games blues, four to six weeks out that you're riding the high. And then, eventually it gets to a point where you could walk into a coffee shop and no one knows that you just won a gold medal.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Right.

Jess Bartley:

And so, there's this ebb and a flow, that I've seen a lot with the athletes who did not qualify. They had to get a job. They had to move forward with life. And, no one knows that they are a two time Olympian, and just didn't make it this year, and all of the things that are going on. So, that's what we've actually found is the most helpful is, we've let those athletes connect with each other, because those are the ones that get it. Those are the ones that are like, "I'm exactly in the same spot." And so, that's been really helpful.

Jess Bartley:

We're looking at some other programming to get athletes together, to understand, "Who am I without sport? How do we translate all of the things that made you the best swimmer, soccer player into the workforce or into the next phase of life? Whether that is also being the best parent or the best spouse." I've had a number of conversations with athletes that, "You are so narrowly focused on this one thing that you block a lot of other pieces of life out. And so, how do we start to integrate that? How do we understand what those other pieces of life are? What's important to you?" So, we're really going to beef up our programming around those supports.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Are you going to Tokyo?

Jess Bartley:

I am.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Oh my gosh. How are you feeling heading into the games?

Jess Bartley:

I'm really excited just to get there. I think that, again, the uncertainty piece... So, one of the things I was really excited, I was able to connect with a staff member from the IOC. And so, the International Olympic Committee, she's been there for two months already. And so, what I did was I had been speaking to her to get a sense of, what is it like over there? And that again, the certainty piece was incredibly helpful. So, we invited her into one of our trainings for the staff and the athletes that are going over. And again, it's that certainty piece that it's... People are wearing masks, but really, really happy, cordial... Again, you hear of things like, "They want us here. They don't want us here." So again, the certainty piece, and I think I'm just excited to get over there and to really start experiencing it, just because I think that, you can imagine so many things up in your minds. And, we're not really going to know until we get over there.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Yeah. Do you have any expectations of what it's going to be like?

Jess Bartley:

I don't. I actually feel like we're really well prepared. So, we have protocols for everything. I feel like the COVID protocols are incredible, to keep us safe physically. We also have protocols in place, mentally. Should you be quarantined? We have very specific things. If we are to go into quarantine, you'll have a mental health provider assigned to you. We also have protocols around just how we move about in the Olympic Village, the venues. So, there's a lot of protocols in place that help improve, and increase safety, and the likelihood of somebody getting sick. We know things will happen though, and we're ready for those. I think some of the other things we're also really prepared for is, we've had an overhaul for protest and demonstration. So, for the first time the USOPC has lifted sanctions on protest.

Jess Bartley:

And so, trying to understand what could potentially come up with mental health around wanting to use your platform to protest, and to demonstrate, and to support something in particular. And so, I think that's going to be really big. We have protocols for that, around should you need mental health support? Should you need media support? So, that's going to be really different as well.

Jess Bartley:

So, lots of different pieces that we're hoping to provide mental health support around. We've also, as I mentioned, have mental health officers, so should anything come up, we have identified mental health officers that are licensed mental health providers, psychiatrists, we've got all of those folks on the ground to be able... If you don't perform as expected, if something comes up back home, we've got a lot of things that are being managed around mental health.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Does your role change at all while the Olympics are going on? How do you support athletes over there?

Jess Bartley:

I think at this point, for me, I tend to not introduce anything new. And so, a lot of it's reminding athletes of the supports they have, or the skill set they have, or the tools that they have, that have gotten them to this place. But I think that my own personal philosophy is not to introduce anything new, and just to really understand how an athlete got to exactly where they're at, and what they might need in that moment. But, it shifts a little bit to just refining, and maintaining, and also thinking about crisis. Should something come up and really interrupt what's going on, I think that, that could influence how we're interacting. There's a number of things that come up, whether it is a death in the family, or somebody is sick with COVID. I keep thinking, that if we have somebody who is sick with COVID on a team sport, we might take out the entire team.

Jess Bartley:

So, there's all these different pieces that might come up and we're really prepared for. And we've paired athletes with rooming situations, and we're flying them on different flights so that they're not together, but there's a lot of things that are going to be very different about this games. But also just in general, as you get into the games.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Right, for the games of the future, has there been anything from this five-year cycle that you think will stick and be applied as common practice?

Jess Bartley:

I think, and I hope that mental health will be much more a part of the conversation moving forward. I think, we've had a number of really prominent athletes who are speaking out on mental health and how important that is. I think there's been more resources, there's been a better understanding of what the athletes really experience day-to-day, whether it is that balancing of school, or work, travel. I know a number of athletes who are caring for really ill family members with COVID, and you had to decide, "I can't go to this competition, because if I were to then get exposed, I don't think I would get sick, but I can't bring that back into the house." And so, it's just been such a struggle, but I think I've seen a number of athletes speak to those struggles. And again, it starts to become normalized.

Lorne Fultonberg:

Jess Bartley is with DU's Sports and Performance Psychology program. And in Tokyo, for the most part, she'll be with team USA's karate athletes. Lacey Henderson, the long jumper from earlier isn't DU's only Paralympian. In our show notes, meet two other athletes who had to change course and tough it out when the pandemic hit. Plus, you'll find more details on team USA's mental health services and a trailer for that HBO documentary we mentioned. That's all at du.edu/radioed. Alyssa Hurst is our executive producer. Tamara Chapman is our managing editor. James Swearingen arranged our theme. I'm Lorne Fultonberg, and this is RadioEd.