Elite athletes given lump sum payments to help transition out of sports

For many athletes, the ‘come-down’ after competing in an Olympic games can cause severe mental ill health. The Australian Institute of Sport has started a new grant program aimed at helping athletes adjust.

Hayder Shkara hugging his father. The former Olympian said he struggled to adjust after the Games were over.

“It's like just everything falls off the cliff,” Hayder Shkara said.

The former Australian Taekwondo Olympian describes his post-Olympic experience as a freefall where all support and stability was wiped away.

Shkara, who missed out on qualifying for the 2012 London Olympics, competed at the Rio Games in 2016 where he was in the running for a potential medal. While the period leading up to the Olympics was difficult, where he felt pressure to perform, he said the post-Olympic period shocked his system.

“You’re kind of ramping up, you know … toward one point,” Shkara said of the lead-up to the Olympics.

“But there needs to be a kind of a ramp down, opposed to just a cliff where you just kind of fall off and everything kind of just stops and all of a sudden.”

Hayder Shkara at the Rio Olympic Games. Source: Getty Images Credit: Dean Mouhtaropoulos

Shkara said after the excitement of the Olympics wears off, athletes are left alone in an unfamiliar environment. They are without a training regime, the support of their team and for many, the familiar goal of the Olympic games.

“After a day or two things start to sink in,” Shkara said.

“There’s just a huge void in your life and routine. You have to fill that void yourself.”

In the lead up to the games, athletes are supported by coaches, team members and sporting bodies, but many athletes feel that support drops off once the games finish.

For the first time, the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) is offering financial grants of up to $17,500 for retired athletes to help their transition out of professional sports.

Ella Sabljak playing wheelchair basketball. Source: Supplied

Ella Sabljak, Paralympian wheelchair basketball player, says she struggled after the Paralympic Games in Tokyo last year.

“I think we experience a comeback down or a low after a big tournament, because you put everything into this one tournament. And so your whole life for two years is based on this one event. Now, this event is over, what's next?,” Sabljak said.

"You're just at home alone, or with whoever and then, you've got to pick yourself up and try and get to the next phase."

Sabljak said her whole Paralympic experience was highly stressful. Her team, the Gliders, had failed to qualify for the Rio Paralympics, marking the first time Australia had not sent a women’s wheelchair basketball team to the Paralympic Games.

“You put your whole life on hold for the two or three years leading up to the games plus with COVID and whatnot, then you're thrown into the games. Thrown into a really tense pressure cooker situation.”

Ella Sabljak. Source: Supplied

One in three Australian athletes experiencing depression

The AIS, the country’s high-performance training centre, trains Olympic and Paralympic athletes across a range of sports.

Matt Butterworth, clinical psychologist at the AIS, said that in 2018, the AIS conducted a mental health audit of athletes that found one-in-three Australian athletes were experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety “to the level that you'd usually need to go and see someone about.”

But it’s not just Olympic level athletes that experience this type of mental ill health. A study conducted by BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine in 2021 found that 63 per cent of active and former A-League Men and A-League Women players experienced sport-related psychological distress.

Lauren Jackson shoots for Australia. Source: Getty Images

In 2017, Lauren Jackson told Insight that she felt she was “put out to pasture” when she retired from professional basketball due to injury.

“It was like I’d been one of their greatest resources and you know, athletes. Then all of a sudden it was over. You don’t hear from them.”

“I did go into a shell. I stayed with my parents and didn’t leave the house…I just didn't have that support.”

The 41-year-old has since come out of retirement and will be joining the Opals to compete in the FIBA Women’s Basketball in September.

For Olympic level athletes, the arrival of COVID-19, which pushed the Tokyo 2020 games back to 2021, caused the number of athletes suffering mental ill health symptoms to rise.

We saw that about one in two athletes were showing sort of symptoms of anxiety or depression.

Matt Butterworth, clinical psychologist at the AIS

Mr Butterworth said one of the contributing factors to negative mental health is the fact athletes have worked in cycles of four to eight years to reach this one event. Once they finish, athletes are left feeling lost.

‘[It’s the] key goal that they've been working towards. Last time, it was a five-year cycle,” Mr Butterworth said, referring to the pushback of the Tokyo 2020 games.

According to Beyond Blue, one in 16 Australians are currently experiencing depression, and one in seven experiencing an anxiety condition.

While the AIS measured ‘symptoms’ rather than diagnosing athletes, Mr Butterworth said the AIS recognised that Australian Olympians and Paralympians were experiencing symptoms at a “higher [rate] than the general community”.

Hayder Shkara at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Source: Getty Images Credit: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

To help combat this, the AIS provides a Mental Health Referral Network for all athletes competing in the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The service which offers access to psychologists, psychiatrists, neuropsychologists, social workers and dieticians saw a 68 per cent uptake in the lead-up to the games with a bump in engagement after the games concluded.

“We did see a slight theme, people starting to sort of come down from the games and struggling to readjust,” Mr Buterworth said.

“We even had a bump [in athletes accessing mental health services] after the games had finished.”

Yet some athletes feel as if the support isn’t accessible enough for those who are struggling.

“If you get an email saying, Oh, hey there, you know, there's this webinar that we're running or this program that we have, it's not really very enticing for you to attend,” Shkara said.

Ella Sablijak. Source: Supplied

Sabljak says services still aren’t present enough to prompt people to access them when they are having difficulties.

“I've been my lowest and I’ve had all of this training and I've been through enough practice what I've preached, but when you're in the dark places, honestly, it's shit and you don't know what to do. I couldn't just think rationally, because that's just not the reality.”

The AIS has conducted an independent evaluation of its mental health referral network.

“We're finalising the report now. But the results that we've had have indicated that people that have engaged in the service have said that it's helped them. They found it to be an accessible service as well. You know, it's funded, they get to be seen quickly,” said Mr Butterworth.

“A key work on for us that was feedback to us was around the awareness that the service is available to them. So we've done a lot of work promoting the service.”

Six month transition grants for retiring athletes

To help combat the struggles faced by retiring athletes, the AIS has introduced transition grants, which they announced in April.

The program allows retired athletes to apply for up to six months of funding security to help them transition out of the competitive sporting sphere. Both Paralympians and Olympians are able to access up to $17,500 of funding.

“There is a lot of uncertainty in the time immediately after moving away from something as all-encompassing as high-performance sport,” Australian Olympic rower, Luke Ketcher said.

The availability of the AIS Transition grants made that uncertainty feel more okay for me while I found my feet.

Luke Ketcher

Since Tokyo 2020, 40 Olympic and Paralympic athletes have received support from this scheme.

To be eligible for the grant, athletes must have a transition plan with their national sporting organisation which includes regular checkups.

“I think that's a really kind of amazing kind of offer that they're putting forward,” Shkara said.

Hayder Shakara and Safwan Khalil at the Rio 2016 Olympics. Source: Supplied

“You know, there's a lot of financial stress and financial pressure on people, so, you know, it's all good to kind of support athletes on the way but there needs to be something on the way out as well.

“Something like this is going to be really, really useful for a lot of these athletes.”

“You know, like a warm-up, you need to cool down as well. And I think offering that kind of package allows that kind of cool-off period.”

Life beyond sport

Shkara, who retired from his sport in 2017 and went on to become a divorce lawyer, said that engaging in a career outside of sport was a “no brainer”.

“There are all these horror stories as to what happens when it goes wrong, or if you get injured or the chances of being successful.”

“It's just a no-brainer, you have to focus on some kind of other profession whilst you're competing.”

Ella Sablijak competing at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Source: Supplied

Sabljak, who is still competing, is a primary school teacher and now Education Manager for Paralympics Australia and is a great advocate of having a career outside of sport.

“There are so many external factors that we can't control.”

“Having something else outside of sport gives you something else to think about. Then it helps create your identity outside of sport so that if it’s taken away, not all of who you are is taken.”