The legacy: Why the Olympics are a high-risk time for athletes on the sidelines

Two months ago, Shire Kaka’s knee and Olympic dream were shattered.

The Black Ferns Sevens star ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament during the group stage of the World Rugby Sevens Tour in Singapore.

At first, it didn’t seem like a big deal. Kaka stepped out with her right foot to go around her English opponent – a move she must have done more than a thousand times in her career, Kaka thought – when she felt her knee give way.

As she was carried off the court, she wasn’t thinking about the pain. The 29-year-old was mentally calculating the recovery time required for different degrees of knee injury.

“I was like, ‘It’s OK, it’s probably the MCL (medial collateral ligament), the kneecap, it could take up to six weeks.’ I was calculating how long it would take me to be back before the Olympic squad was confirmed,” said Kaka, who along with her “sisters” won gold at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

The team’s medical staff quickly overturned those estimates. Under the stands of Singapore’s National Stadium, doctors performed a routine examination of Kaka’s knee. His face showed pain.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry, I’m pretty sure it’s the ACL,'” Kaka recalled.

She still didn’t believe it until she saw the black-and-white image on the scan. The medical imaging confirmed the worst: This was the third ACL rupture of her career.

“I think this is the most hurtful thing,” Kaka said. “Some days I still wake up and want to cry.”

“I was in the best shape of my life. I was the fastest I’ve ever been. I was the fittest and strongest I’ve ever been.”

“After my last ACL injury (in 2019), I put so much work into becoming a better person — not making the Olympics, I was always second-guessing whether I had done enough. This time around, I know I’ve done everything I can, and I’ll do some damage to the other team. I’ll make my family and myself proud.”

Kaka is one of hundreds of hopefuls who will not be able to compete in this year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The New Zealand Olympic Committee had prepared a list of more than 700 athletes for the Olympics. Only 195 athletes were selected for the Paris Olympics, which means that more than 70% of Olympic athletes failed to achieve their goals.

Clinical psychologist Karen Nimmo said the Olympic period could be a “high risk” time for athletes who were eliminated, including those who failed to qualify or meet the NZOC’s additional “top 16” selection criteria, shock eliminations, injured athletes, athletes battling illness and even recently retired athletes.

“For psychologists, there are always red lights flashing when athletes are not competing because sport is not only their job, it’s also their joy or safe space and where they feel most valued,” she said.

“But I think the high-profile Olympics are a higher level event because it’s often people’s childhood dream and people have worked for years to get to this place, so when you can’t go, it’s definitely a blow.”

Nimmo added that the situation can be especially tough for athletes who miss games for sudden or unexpected reasons, such as shock injuries or absences.

“It turns their world upside down.”

‘It’s so confusing’

When a door suddenly closes in front of her, Kaka finds new paths to pursue.

The outgoing athlete, who is married to All Blacks Sevens legend Giles Kaka, is exploring a career in media and has The crowd went wild.

Kaka had been covering the Olympic selection announcements in the run-up to the Games as part of her reporting duties. While she smiled for the camera and celebrated with the other athletes, she was struggling internally.

The naming of the Black Ferns Sevens rugby team is particularly difficult.

“I’m fighting back tears at the moment because naming the sevens team is probably one of the hardest things I’ve done in the last few months,” she said.

“I was so wrapped up in the media and the support while I was there that I didn’t have time to comprehend what was going on in my head. But driving home afterwards was really, really hard,” she said.

“My husband looked at me and he said, ‘Are you OK?’ That really pissed me off. I think that’s when it really hit me that this was real. I wasn’t going to go to the Olympics.”

Kaka joked that at least during this time, her acting skills had improved.

“Shortland Street, if you need actors, I’m here and I can help. I think I’d be great.”

Kaka is in Paris watching the Olympics and has taken a job with New Zealand rugby’s new media channel NZR+, covering the men’s and women’s sevens.

She said she has done a lot of work to develop coping strategies for the emotions that inevitably arise during the match, which gets underway tonight at the Stade de France for the men’s group stage. Her husband, Gilles, has come to Paris to keep her company as her “emotional support animal.”

“I knew there would be some challenging moments,” Kaka said. “What’s confusing is that while I feel sad, I’m still excited for my sisters. My emotions are mixed at the moment because I’m proud of the team, but selfishly, I wish it was me who was on the field at that time.”

Nimmo said major disappointments can trigger strong emotional reactions in athletes, including anger, grief, sadness, anxiety and depression.

“The biggest one, and the one that no one talks about, is jealousy. Jealousy can set in. Athletes are very competitive, and obviously when they’re stuck at home, it’s hard for them to be excited for other people.”

When all you know is four years of life

Since she was a teenager, Dame Sophie Pascoe’s life has revolved around the quadrennial sporting extravaganza.

The Christchurch swimmer made her international debut aged just 13 and competed in her first Paralympic Games in Beijing aged just 15.

It was at the 2008 Olympics that the talented teenager won three gold medals and a silver medal, becoming a national treasure.

At every Olympic Games, the medals, records and honors continue to increase.

But this year, New Zealand’s Paralympic ambassador will not be in Paris. Ms Sophie has a new title: mum.

She and husband Rob Samson gave birth to a boy earlier this year, and Pascoe withdrew from the Paralympics.

“It’s unusual to feel on the edge,” she said.

“This is the first time in 16 years that I’m not competing in the Paralympics. All I really know is that my life has been divided into four-year cycles and everything revolves around this event.

“So while there were definitely reasons for happiness that I didn’t go there, I think deep down I was feeling a little bit of FOMO (fear of missing out).”

Before having children, Pascoe had been considering returning to the pool ahead of this year’s Paralympics. She ultimately decided she didn’t want to “force my body into training too soon” and that seven months was too short a time frame to get back to her competitive level.

Pascoe said it was an easy decision in the end, stressing that she was not retiring from top-level swimming. But getting to the point where she could let go took a long time and a lot of hard work.

She said her mental health struggles after being forced to step away from competition during the coronavirus pandemic made her aware of the dangers of tying her identity and self-worth to her status as an athlete.

“Tokyo was absolutely everything to me, and going into 2020 I thought I was truly indestructible. But I did break down. COVID broke me down, and I realised there were so many areas of my life that I hadn’t taken care of.

“After I got sick with Covid, I suffered from severe depression because I couldn’t train, I couldn’t play – I thought I had lost everything,” Pascoe said.

“Since then, I’ve been working with clinical psychologists and sports psychologists to be able to put myself in a good place. There’s no doubt that I’ll have a lot of emotions during the Paralympics, but I now have the skills to recognise when I’m having a hard time and deal with it.”

“I knew something was wrong”

Past struggles and setbacks also helped Anton Cooper find perspective on life as he faced the disappointment of missing the Olympics.

For elite mountain bike athletes, making it to the Olympics this year was always going to be a daunting task.

The Tokyo Olympian has suffered a series of injuries and health issues over the past three years that have limited his participation in World Cup events.

While Cooper experienced disruption after disruption, his New Zealand rival Sam Gates performed well, winning the 2023 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships short track and marathon events and finishing second in the Olympic distance event.

But after a strong off-season, Cooper hopes to rejoin the Pro Tour this year and accumulate enough points to win second place for New Zealand in the Paris Men’s Cross-Country Championship.

“I expected to go to the (inaugural) World Cup in Brazil and get on the podium. But when I went to the first race, I was 60th,” said Cooper, who finished sixth at the Tokyo Olympics.

“I had no chance. I couldn’t get back to where I was before – I was down 70 watts on the bike and my heart rate was 10 beats below my max. So I knew something was wrong, but I also thought maybe it would come back quickly – but it didn’t,” he said.

A blood test earlier this month revealed Cooper had toxoplasmosis – a parasitic infection.

The diagnosis brought relief to the 29-year-old athlete. It was too late to regain his Olympic chance, but it gave him an answer to his sudden drop in performance and allowed him to rationalize his disappointment at missing the Games.

He said his previous experience also helped, having missed the Rio Olympics after being diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.

“As disappointing as it was at the time, I really focused on competing after that, and the five years after that Olympics were the best years of my career,” said Cooper, who has already set his sights on the next Olympics in Los Angeles.

“But it was tough. When the Rio Olympics came around, I couldn’t go to the games, that’s it. Sometimes you just need to distract yourself with something else.”

Nimmo said avoidance is a good strategy for any athlete who might find it hard to handle the disappointment of missing the Olympics — though she acknowledged that it could be difficult when the Olympics receive overwhelming coverage.

“It’s important for athletes to let their emotions run wild, but also maintain some boundaries,” she said. “Distract yourself with fun things, even if it doesn’t feel particularly fun at the time. Keep those healthy routines, but don’t put too much pressure on yourself.”

Cooper’s focus now is on his health. He has been out of action for several weeks as his doctors in Europe, where he races for the Trek Factory Racing Team, work out a medication plan for him.

He hopes to be back on the court next month, ready for the world championships in September, but if the past three years have taught him anything, it’s not to pin your hopes on just one event.

“I’ve come to realise over the years that, in a way, sport is my life because it’s my job. But there’s also more to life than sport.”