Since the resumption of tournaments and championships, the health bubble imagined to preserve competition has also put the mental health of top athletes to the test. In tennis, the phenomenon is striking, as we will still be able to see at Roland-Garros. And calls for awareness.
How to live well your sport … when you cannot live well at all? Since the recovery, tennis players have faced this equation. On the one hand, the joy of retouching the racquet in competition. On the other hand, sanitary rules which transform the tournament environment into “bubbles” which resemble a sort of golden prison. This will be the case again at Roland Garros, where superstars will not be able to rent houses and where local athletes will not be able to sleep at home. The pleasure of the athlete is now combined with constraint. Not easy to manage in the head.
Stress, depression, trauma: the health crisis linked to Covid-19 anguishes top athletes. “I am worried about their mental health. I feel the impact more now, with the resumption of competitions”, warns Sophie Huguet, mental trainer and sports psychologist. The deprivation of liberty imposed by health protocols, which differ from one country to another according to the doctrines, the fear of false positives and the feeling of lottery creating an anxiety-provoking climate. Tracked by the management of the US Open tournament like a hunter stalking his prey, for the simple fact of having been in contact with Benoît Paire, declared positive, Kristina Mladenovic lived “a nightmare”. Physically tired, worn out nervously, the Frenchwoman collapsed in the second round in New York after having nevertheless led 6-1, 5-1.
Not wishing to take any risks, the American health authorities then finished her morally, forcing her to withdraw from the doubles table where she was teaming up with Timea Babos. “I have the impression that we are prisoners, that we are criminals,” she said, saddened by this episode that she experienced as an injustice. “Those who were in New York, given what they went through, I think they will have post traumatic stress disorder, like you had a scooter accident and have a hard time getting back on the scooter.” , anticipates Lionel Zimbler, coach of Frenchman Benjamin Bonzi, qualified for the second round of Roland-Garros.
Before her entry into the qualifications for the Paris tournament, the young Margot Yerolymos (twenty-three years old) complied with the requirements of the health protocol. From her hotel room where she was locked up, while waiting for the result of her PCR test, the Frenchwoman confided her fear of being positive, and the anxiety-provoking nature of the process. “The atmosphere surrounding the tournament makes it hard to really enjoy it. The invitation is great. On the other hand, I don’t want to jump to the ceiling for fear of falling back ten floors emotionally. ”
“Spending a whole day in a room, for a professional tennis player, is not good. Nervously, it is not good”, adds Lionel Zimbler, former coach of Benoit Paire. Little spared in recent weeks after his positive test at the US Open which had earned him to spend several days in a room, Paire had followed up with the tournaments in Rome and Hamburg, at the same time as the PCRs and their results, sometimes, poles apart. Again positive in Hamburg, where he was able to play since German regulations are different, Benoît Paire waited with feverishness for the result of his Parisian test, which was ultimately negative.
“I was happy, I said to myself, it’s cool, and at the same time, I still have this sword of Damocles, he confessed on Sunday. If I’m positive afterwards, it’s complicated too. I’ll try to take advantage of this victory (7-5, 6-4, 6-4 in the first round) and tell me that everything is fine, it’s cool. Usually here I am with my friends, my family, I am very happy when I am in Paris. I make small restaurants for myself. And there, having to be still locked in my room or at the club and not being able to share these moments with the public is difficult. J was happy after my test result but not euphoric. “
A crisis that does not belong to them
In addition to the deprivation of liberty, the new format of the competitions, which can change according to government decisions, and the absence of rules specific to all countries have the effect of disorienting high-level athletes. The uncertainty of the future weighs heavily on the morale of athletes. ‘Uncertainty on a daily basis is the worst enemy of a top athlete, it eats them up, it makes them anxious. They always need to be reassured “, continues Lionel Zimbler. The loss of reference points observed in a certain number of high level sportsmen is all the more badly experienced, a fortiori by tennis players, that they are used to living. in a bubble, theirs, where everything is governed according to their needs and desires, to create an environment of performance.
“Professional tennis players are still in the majority of cases very attached to the small details, the small things that can make the difference, recalls Lionel Zimbler. I fully understand that it can be very hard to take a lot of hindsight, of not being able to train as they want, to access care, to everything that is usually done. Because they are used to that. When they do not do things to the maximum, they lose confidence. There are a lot of players who need to do things the best they can, to be able to gain confidence before their game. We know that. “
A world crumbles around them, whereas usually, whatever the category of the tournament being played, from the director to the organization of the competition, everyone is busy and bending over backwards to ensure that the players involved. have the opportunity to eat and sleep well. And this so that they give the best performance in the field. The situation has changed somewhat in the context of a global pandemic. Because this crisis does not belong to them. For the first time perhaps, for some anyway, tennis players and top athletes in general give the impression of being confronted with normal life, with the same realities, which makes them human, fragile and vulnerable.
“All this chaos around the organization of the competitions, the loss of benchmarks, explode things which could keep them in a certain illusion”, explains Bertrand Guérineau, sports psychologist at the Nantes University Hospital (and as a liberal). Are athletes lying to themselves? The health crisis has in any case highlighted the need for structured psychological support, a more neutral voice, less focused on performance. “When an athlete is considered only through his performances, he is dehumanized most of the time, continues Bertrand Guérineau. And when it comes to young people who were considered very young as extraterrestrials of their sport, at the level of identity , it can create quite severe disorders, especially in the context of injuries. “
And the psychologist adds: “I would like us to be able to understand that an athlete does not need a high level trainer, a physio, a doctor, a physiotherapist. and a mental trainer to boost them, but that it also needs other things, to make them alive, to bring them back to humanity. And to things which are sometimes of the psychological order but that we overwrite because he must not show his flaws: the fantasy of being indestructible. ” Great champions, however, took advantage of this uncertain period to lay bare, to dare to speak of the substance, of the psychological consideration of their reality.
“I love to play tennis, and now it becomes a job”
“What should be eradicated is this logic which consists in locking athletes in ghettos with a way of thinking, a guy from the middle who reproduces models of yesteryear, maintains Bertrand Guérineau. So, obviously that sport works like that, but it would take otherness, openness, understanding that talking to people who don’t give a damn about them being world champions, it feels good too. And there they can evoke the the fact that they don’t have a boyfriend or that sexuality is complicated, that the emotional relationship, they do not know how to do: the normal life of someone in development. “
Even before knowing the circumstances with which he was going to have to deal, Jérémy Chardy was not very excited by the prospect of evolving in this post-Covid world and its restrictions applied to high-level sport. Because there was also the birth of her child, and it turns the life of a young parent upside down, at the age of thirty-three, tennis was no longer the priority, especially to come and play in these conditions.
“This period, it is difficult. I could not see my family. They came here (in Paris), it had been a month since I had seen them, he poured out on Sunday after his defeat in five sets (after leading two rounds to zero) against Austrian Jurij Rodionov in the first round of Roland Garros. Which could well be his last tournament of the season given the circumstances: “It’s difficult for me because ‘Usually I love to play tennis, I love being in a tournament, and now it becomes a job, I have trouble training, I do not take pleasure at all on the court in training, match. I have double here, but I don’t know if I will continue my season or if I will stop after Roland. If I answer you right away, it wouldn’t even be until the end of the season … (Smile.) Roland is finished, I don’t see myself playing another tournament this season. It’s hard to talk after such a frustrating game, but what is certain is that it didn’t help to make me want to continue. “
