Holly Bradshaw on Post-Olympic Blues…

Holly Bradshaw on Post-Olympic Blues

In 2022, Holly Bradshaw published a paper on post-Olympic blues*. Later that year, I discussed the paper with her. While it is an academic study, it had a real personal resonance with her, as she told me of her experience after the 2016 and the 2021 Olympics, where she won a medal.

Why did you write the paper?

I had written my undergraduate dissertation on overcoming adversity.  I saw a post from a researcher who wanted athletes to take part in her study about post-Olympic blues, something I had suffered quite badly after Rio.  So I felt that I wanted to be part of that, and we kept in touch.

Off the back of that, she asked if I was interested in doing a piece of research together that would be co-authored and more in-depth.  She thought that through my contacts with Olympians, we would be able to get a lot of good data.  But it all started with me having a passion, from having experienced the blues to wanting to see changes in the kind of support athletes get to make sure no one else had to go through it.

What is meant by “Post Olympic blues”?

It varies from person to person, and people have it in quite different forms.  I actually suffered with it worse after Tokyo than after Rio, which shows that no matter whether you’re successful or not, you can still experience the blues.  I think it’s coming down after experiencing something massive, something you’ve probably worked towards all your life.  You return home from the Olympics, normality resumes, and you think this is very different.  For me it was like you’re feeling down.  After Rio, I felt I’d done a really good job finishing fifth, and I was really happy, but it seemed that nobody really cared.  No one from the team said ‘well done…amazing effort’ or anything like that.  I felt I came home to being a failure because I didn’t win a medal.  For me, that was really hard because I thought I’d done a good job.

Are there different kinds of blues?

I think that athletes returning home from the Olympics experience varying levels of depression.  If you feel you have underperformed and will have to wait another four years to get another chance or if you performed really…