Gathering narratives: Athletes’ experiences preparing for the Tokyo summer olympic games during a global pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the Tokyo Olympic Games postponement, has created unprecedented challenges for Olympic level athletes. Given the adversity athletes have faced since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, the construct of psychological resilience is a useful framework for understanding athlete experiences during this time, and is conceptualized by Fletcher and Sarkar as an individual’s ability to protect against the negative effect of stressors. The purpose of this research was to explore the experiences of Canadian athletes preparing for the Tokyo summer Olympic Games during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Interviews were conducted with 20 Canadian athletes across individual and team sports. The participants spoke of the multiple ways they were taking care of themselves and developing resilience throughout the pandemic, highlighting the complexity involved with managing an adversity. Four narratives illuminate the athletes’ experiences: the critical role of context, the essential nature of social support, the importance of being more than an athlete, and the relevance of learning to reflect on one’s life. For these athletes, factors such as Olympic qualification, stage of their career, physical and mental health, and access to resources influenced their experience of the pandemic, demonstrating the importance of both individual and environmental factors when exploring resilience. Importantly, the athletes did not manage this adversity on their own, but received strong support. Therefore, sport psychology consultants can assist an athlete’s development of resilience by providing expertise and taking into account an athlete’s personal context.

 Lay summary: Twenty athletes preparing for the Tokyo Olympic Games during the COVID-19 pandemic were interviewed and four narratives are presented. All athletes were experiencing the pandemic differently based on their personal circumstances and were managing the adversity with social support, reflection, and pursuits beyond sport.

APPLIED IMPLICATIONS

• Develop resources for coaches, athletes, and sport psychology practitioners to become competent in understanding and developing a high-performance sport environment that is both challenging and supportive

• Recognize the importance of social support in learning how to effectively reflect and develop pursuits outside of high-performance sport

• Understand and develop resilience, in a way that promotes, rather than diminishes, mental health

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all our athlete-participants for generously sharing their stories of training and life during the global pandemic of COVID-19.

Disclosure statement

No potential competing interest was reported by the authors. The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, MR. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Additional information

Funding

We would also like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for supporting this work.