World Mental Health Day 2023: From Simone Biles to Noah Lyles, Olympic stars reflect on the importance of taking care of the mind

Simone Biles: The most decorated gymnast of all time. Noah Lyles: The world’s fastest man. Rayssa Leal: A 15-year-old skateboarding phenom.

Beside their impressive Olympic achievements, these standout athletes have something else in common.

They have all faced mental challenges while striving for physical excellence in their respective sports. And with the assistance of professional therapists, they have also developed strategies to strengthen their minds.

As 10 October, like every year, marks World Mental Health Day, Olympics.com talked with some of the biggest stars in sport about the importance of speaking out about mental challenges, at-home practices that can help calm the mind, and why you don't need to be a high-performance athlete to prioritise your mental well-being.

• New IOC Mental Health Action Plan to further focus on well-being of athletes and promoting psychologically safe environments
• IOC Mental Health in Elite Athletes toolkit

Mental health: The courage to speak... and hit pause

Simone Biles’ revelations at Tokyo 2020 in 2021, about the mental struggles that forced her to pull out halfway through the gymnastics competition, was a game-changer in discussions about mental health in sports. Inspired by her openness, many more Olympians - including Naomi Osaka, Adam Peaty, Caeleb Dressel, and Tom Daley - shared similar experiences.

And their words had a profound effect.

Olympic BMX freestyle champion Charlotte Worthington was one of the athletes who heard their message when she needed it most.

"I was constantly seeing training, and seeing gym and BMX as [if] it had to be this really difficult, hard, gruelling thing. I'd constantly have to do things that I didn't want to do. If I wasn't on the floor, beaten up, then I wasn't trying hard enough," the British freestyler told Olympics.com. "I totally lost balance of where it was fun and positive. You should be stoked on what you do, and be proud of yourself, and it was the opposite of that. Nothing was ever good enough and I was looking outside of myself a lot for approval."

Speaking to other athletes who experienced similar lows after winning Olympic gold comforted Worthington with the knowledge that she was not alone in having such feelings. It also gave her the courage to take time off from riding.

That decision turned out to be a life saver.

"If I didn't take a break, I would have just ground myself into the ground. I think talking about it really helps, and it's difficult because if you're a high-performing, high-striving athlete, then you don't really want anyone to see your weaknesses," Worthington said. "Now more and more athletes are speaking out about it, so it inspired me to speak out about it because people doing that helped me a lot get through it."

Japan's Kanoa Igarashi has also noticed mental health become a bigger topic, including within his surfing community.

"Mental health is a very important subject nowadays, and thankfully through sport and through social media, it's actually become a subject that's a lot more talked about than before," the Olympic silver medallist told Olympics.com. "Everybody has things that they're dealing with. In all sports everyone is addressing it more often."

The pressures of professional sport, and everyday life

There is often an aura of invincibility about Olympic athletes – but as the athletes themselves say, their incredible physical strength is not a firewall against mental struggles, doubts or stress.

"I didn't understand the weight of the Olympics," said Brazil's Rayssa Leal, who was 13 years old when her stunning skateboarding tricks earned her an Olympic silver medal in Tokyo. "I started going to therapy. I started talking to my psychologist."

There are many pressures that professional athletes face throughout their time in sport, from career-threatening injuries to the pressure from media, national federations, and sponsors - all played out in front of thousands of spectators. Often, however, the biggest battle is the one within.

"Stress is the silent killer. As a perfectionist, sometimes it's hard to live with myself because I expect from myself more than everybody else," Tokyo 2020 sport climbing champion Janja Garnbret told Olympics.com. "Normally, I don't even feel pressure from other people or the climbing community or from media because I put so much pressure on myself. I expect myself to win every single competition, to not give 100 per cent but 200 per cent every day, so sometimes it's not so easy to live with myself."

Perfectionism can spike even more when world or national records are within reach, or in judged sports where perfect scores are as much a goal as are gold medals.

"Being an athlete in such a high level is tough," Norwegian wrestler Grace Bullen told Olympics.com. "Mostly it's just because you work with yourself too much, and to be able to just not think about it or just let it go, it's one of the hardest things to do."

"It’s very hard," Igarashi agreed. "You pretty much dedicate your life to one thing, maybe 70 per cent of the year. It starts eating away at you mentally, especially in a sport like surfing where you are in a very uncontrolled environment, where you are surfing against Mother Nature. You spend a very long time away from home, there are a lot of sacrifices involved just like in every other sport and that is very difficult.”

And when the mental strain gets too much, the results plummet as well.

"Both come hand in hand, physical and mental. I'd say it's 50/50," said double Olympic boxing champion Nicola Adams. "You can see, for example, an athlete, they do unbelievable in the gym. They're in super great shape and then they come into the ring and, all of a sudden, that all fades away. They've forgotten about the strength they have. All the courage just goes. And then you're like, 'What? What happened? How has this amazing fighter just disappeared like that?'"

For Adams, the most difficult moment in her career was not facing the world's toughest boxers in the ring, but rather the serious back injury she sustained in 2010. At one point not even able to lift her shoulders off the floor, the British boxer was sidelined from sport for a year but made a remarkable comeback to win gold at her home Olympic Games in London.

While the extreme highs and lows of a sports career rarely reach the same amplitude in everyday life, the mental blocks that athletes face are not much different from the daily struggles of many. Charlotte Worthington noticed this after sharing her story and hearing her friends reply that they had experienced similar pressures in their everyday jobs.

"Since doing it [taking a mental health break], I've realised a lot of my own peers and friends have gone through it in their own way," she said. "It translates to so many different careers and anyone that's trying to do anything with their life is going to go through rocky road."

Making mental health a habit: Athletes share strategies that work

Talking about mental health struggles is often the first step to healing.

Olympic badminton champion Viktor Axelsen is among the advocates of being open about emotions, no matter how dark they are.

"[It's] the ability to be vulnerable and speak out about whatever. If you're nervous about something, if there's something you don't feel like it's working for you or you feel like the expectations are too much. There are many, many different things which can play with your mind," the Danish star told Olympics.com. "Try to have someone to talk about it and not be afraid."

Fellow badminton player, PV Sindhu, agreed: "A lot of people don't come forward and don't see it or they think that it is a thing where they need to hide it. But I think you don't have to hide anything about it. It is important. It is good that you let go and you see what you're feeling and I'm sure there are people to help you out because this is not something like a disease where you have to keep it to yourself and take it for the rest of your life. If you let go, it makes you feel free."

Realising the benefits of speaking, some athletes have made mental health conversations as much a part of their Games preparation as training in the gym.

World champion sprinter Noah Lyles has capitalised on these benefits since childhood.

"I've been in therapy since I was probably nine years old, so this is not foreign to me. It's very normal. It's natural," Lyles told Olympics.com. "Mental health isn't its own entity. It's everyday life. We're just talking about everyday things and it just so happens that you feel uncomfortable because you feel vulnerable and it's the feeling of being vulnerable that stops you from wanting to talk about it. But it's still the same everyday things you go through all the time and it's like, 'Let's start simple'."

Simone Biles has also made therapy a part of her weekly routine since Tokyo 2020. Two years on, she capped her triumphant comeback by winning four gold medals at the 2023 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in October.

"I'm making a bigger effort into taking care of my mind and my body, which includes going to therapy once every week, usually on Thursday is kind of my therapeutic day and I try to take a day for myself," Biles told Olympics.com. "It's really important that I'm taking care of my mind as much as I do my body, especially in this sport and outside of the sport."

In addition to talking to professionals, athletes employ different strategies to keep their minds healthy.

For Nicola Adams the trick is meticulous planning.

"Some of the things were just small things like being organised and having my kit ready for competition, making sure all my meal plans were in order," Adams said. "It's these one percenters that then you don't have to think about. You're like, 'OK, my kit's done. OK, I don't have to think about nutrition anymore. My meals are planned'. It's just getting the one percenters in the right place so that then all you have to think about is the boxing."

Four years since retiring from competitive sport, Adams continues to do meditation, yoga, and visualisation to keep her mind sharp.

The key, as skateboarder Nyjah Huston told us, is to keep the mind busy and savour the simple moments of life.

"How do I manage stress? I think I manage stress through staying busy and staying productive," the multi-world champion told Olympics.com. "No matter if it's skating, working out, hiking... I love to hike by myself. That's how I like to clear my mind."