A toxic culture of denial pervades rugby, but the sport must be more honest with itself about players’ mental wellbeingThe interview with Kearnan Myall last week prompted an extraordinary reaction. The former Wasps forward’s searing account of being driven to the verge of taking his own life, in part because of the unseen pressures as a professional rugby player, attracted sympathy from around the world and prompted messages from significant quarters both inside and outside the game.Those who took the trouble to show their public support for Myall included current members of England’s World Cup squad, World Rugby officials, the International Rugby Players’ Association, former World Cup winners, numerous ex-internationals both from England and elsewhere and many current players, some...
Danny Rose has been open in tackling his demons and that can only be a good thing in the wider worldDanny Rose remembered getting angry. He’d suffered his first really serious injury and the team were doing well without him. “I didn’t socialise, I wasn’t sleeping, I was looking to fall out with anybody.” Gareth Southgate and the Duke of Cambridge were among the small audience listening intently as the Tottenham left-back described the signs of his depression. Related: Elite sport is gradually waking up to widespread mental health issues | Sean Ingle Related: ‘They’ve just scratched the surface’ – football tackling mental health but more can be done Continue reading...
Research for Racing Welfare reveals normalised extensive hours placing ‘great psychological strain on those involved’The start of Mental Health Awareness Week on Monday was marked in racing by the publication of ‘stark’ findings in research undertaken by a team at Liverpool John Moores University’s School of Sport and Exercise on the impact of mental health on individuals involved in the sport.The research, which involved detailed interviews with 131 people employed in racing including jockeys, trainers, stud and stable staff and other stakeholders, was commissioned by Racing Welfare. Related: Talking Horses: Heart attacks can't stop Britain's best-known bookie Beverley 1.50 Quiet Place 2.20 Execlusive 2.50 Scale Force 3.20 Qaaraat 3.50 Kylie Rules (nap) 4.20 Highwaygrey 4.50 Homesick Boy 5.25 Casanova. Continue reading...
Administrators are arriving at a better understanding of the extent of anxiety and depression among top sportspeople and a finger is pointing at social mediaOn Friday night the NBA’s commissioner, Adam Silver, made a statement that was both shocking and profound: many of the league’s players, who have an average salary of $7m a year, were “truly unhappy”. He told the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference: “The outside world sees the fame, the money, all the trappings that go with it, and they say: ‘How is it possible they even can be complaining?’ But a lot of these young men are genuinely unhappy.”As he warmed to the theme of his players’ mental health, Silver told his audience that the NBA...
The Olympic legend’s mental health battle is a reminder of the darkness that can descend when a sporting great’s career endsThere were no tears when Victoria Pendleton won her first Olympic gold medal. There was no great emotional climax, no comforting sense, in the aftermath, that her life was now complete. She did not even really feel like celebrating. “It’s like a big anticlimax anyway,” she confided a year later. “I mean, how could you achieve your dream? You don’t plan for the next day. In the morning it’s like it never happened, like you’re reading about it in a comic book. When you’re in that adrenaline-fuelled environment you take in so little … so it’s not easy for it...