[tt] NYT: After Glory of a Lifetime, Asking 'What Now?'

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After Glory of a Lifetime, Asking 'What Now?'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/sports/olympics/18psych.html

By BENEDICT CAREY

The decathlete Bruce Jenner crossed the finish line in the 1,500
meters in the 1976 Montreal Olympics, arms flying above his head,
knowing he had won the gold medal and set a world record. He just
did not know what he was doing for dinner.

"I had no plans, nothing," Jenner said in a telephone interview
Saturday. A friend lent him the use of a luxury suite in Montreal
that night, with sweeping views of the city where he had just been
immortalized. "So there I was in this amazing suite, just beautiful,
and I'm looking around and there's this piano -- the place had a
grand piano -- and I thought, Huh, maybe I should learn to play the
piano. I mean, I was extremely satisfied but also devastated by the
finality of it all."

Some athletes who have reached the pinnacle of their sports in the
Beijing Games have rich lives awaiting at home, budding careers,
university studies, families and children. A precious few, like the
23-year-old swimming star Michael Phelps, who Sunday completed his
goal of a record eight gold medals in a single Games, can expect
lucrative endorsement deals and years more of competing at top form.

But many others have surged to worldwide glory that will be
short-lived, if intensely emotional, and they will soon be engulfed
by the fog of open-ended uncertainty known as ordinary life. There
are second and even third acts on the Olympic stage, but not many.

"You're talking about people who have trained for years, almost
every day, and made huge sacrifices," in their relationships,
career, all of it, said Charlie Brown, a sports psychologist at FPS
Performance in Charlotte, N.C., whose clients include Olympic
kayakers, swimmers and runners. "And for some of them, once they
have this huge, intense experience, it's a very fragile situation
afterwards."

Psychologists have conducted a string of studies of Olympians'
transition to working life. In a 1982 study of 163 Czech Olympians,
researchers found that only 17 percent made the transition to the
workplace without significant emotional distress, including
substance abuse and depression.

In perhaps the most complete survey, the researcher and author Dr.
Steven Ungerleider interviewed 57 United States Olympians in 12
sports, including swimming, hockey, ice skating, fencing and water
polo. Twenty of the athletes were two-time Olympians; eight had
performed on the world stage three times. Their reasons for retiring
varied, from "having accomplished all I needed to" to injury to
"financial problems and could not continue to be poor."

Ungerleider found that 40 percent of the group reported having
serious problems post-Olympics.

"Many reported that this was the only life they knew and it was
inconceivable to do anything else," Ungerleider wrote in the study,
published in 1997.
  athletes handle the loss of identity in diverse ways. Some, like
Eric Heiden, the speedskater who won five golds in 1980 and later
became a surgeon, quickly channel their drive into another
profession. Others, like Oksana Baiul, winner of gold in figure
skating in 1994, struggle with alcohol and other problems. Baiul
bounced back to start a clothing line and skate professionally.

Others remain in their sport, unable to reclaim their Olympic form
but unable to let go, postponing life decisions.

Phelps, whose self-described life is "eat, sleep, swim," can
probably stick to that life for a number of years. He has already
said that he plans to swim in the London Olympics in four years.

In recent decades, sports psychologists, as well as the United
States Olympic Committee, now consider the transition to the
workplace almost as important as the preparation to compete.

In some ways, the marketing machine that turns the most charismatic
Olympians into stars sets up others for a golden hangover, some athletes 
and psychologists say. "Some Olympians now, they think if I
win the gold, then the world will come to my door, and I'll be set,"
Frank Shorter, who won a gold in the marathon in 1972 and a silver
in 1976, said Sunday. "That is the last thing they should be
focusing on."

Shorter, who returned to law school after his first medal, said that 
athletes "should have another passion, something they can use as a
stress release from training and that will be there when the
training is gone."

Dr. Orville Gilbert Brim, a psychologist and author of the
forthcoming book "The Fame Motive," said that if the desire for
renown is strong, consciously or not, then the brief taste of glory
will stoke an appetite for attention. "They will often try to retain
the fame by resorting to all sorts of bizarre behavior to bring attention 
to themselves," Brim said.

Yet for most Olympians, Brim said, the underlying motive is probably
something else: excellence. In a recent interview with The New York
Times, for example, the Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, winner of
five gold medals combined in 1976 and 1980, said, "I didn't want to
compete to make history, I wanted to compete to be the best."

In these cases, sports psychologists say, the challenge is turning
that same drive to another worthy goal. "We call those BHAGs," said
Brown, the sports psychologist at FPS Performance, "for big, hairy,
audacious goals. Former Olympians often need those, when they decide
they're done with the sport."

Even lack of a schedule-- the regular ritual of performance and
reward -- can be disorienting.

"When you're training for the Olympics, everything revolves around
this quadrennial schedule, and you get used to being tested and
rewarded on that schedule -- then it's gone," Greg Louganis, who won
four gold medals in diving in the 1980s, said Sunday. Louganis is
now an actor and can be seen in the movie "Watercolors." "In real
life, it can take you 10 years to accomplish goals you set for
yourself."

After studying law, Shorter became an entrepreneur, starting a
clothing company and earning money speaking, writing and doing TV.
He later became chairman of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. "I
was brought up in the American tradition of climbing the career
ladder, I had the advantage of that, and could create this hedge" to
the running career, he said. Friends referred to his sports career
as the "divertissement" -- the distraction. Jenner, too, found his
feet after winning gold. He said he knew going into the '76 Games
that it would be his last competitive event.

"There's so much more to life, so much that you give up when you're
training, family and career and other interests, and I was so ready
for all of that," he said. A compulsive golfer, he has earned a
living through speaking and TV appearances and also has a role with
his wife, the former Kris Kardashian, in the reality series "Keeping
Up With the Kardashians."

"I'm really enjoying it, and now a whole new generation of young
people recognize me, and may not even know about the gold medal," he
said.

He never did become a concert pianist.