Elite sport might be for a privileged few, but the damage can be real and relentless

Sport has made significant progress in the field of mental health over the past decade, but in reality there’s still a long way to go. Many of us fail to understand how or why a sportsperson might be struggling in what can look like a privileged lifestyle. And this underpins the stigma that persists in elite sport.

There can no longer be any room for assumptions that a sporting life guarantees a healthy state of mind or that sportspeople are immune to mental health issues. The lives of those athletes lost to suicide is testament to this.

The last 12 months alone has seen the high-profile deaths of US cyclist Kelly Catlin and British snowboarder Ellie Soutter, both of whom took their own lives. For these individuals, sport was an irrelevance; in their eyes, life was simply not worth living.

It’s with this in mind that The Independent took on the daunting task of producing a series which aims to push along the conversation around mental health in sport. This meant travelling across the country to speak to those athletes who had been taken to the brink under the stresses and strains of their industry. It meant posing difficult questions and asking these individuals to share the most painful details of their mental health experiences. It meant digging around in the dark realities of what goes on behind sport’s closed doors.

The objective of our Sporting Mind series is not to elicit sympathy or pity. It’s not to shock or sensationalise. It is to generate understanding. It’s to humanise and demonstrate that our sporting idols, in spite of their otherworldly talents and achievements, are just like the rest of us.

We hope we can challenge the methods, practices and cultural views of an industry that continues to place the mental well-being of its athletes on the line. Because while the struggle to improve mental health across all walks of life presents a significant challenge, every forward step – regardless of how and where it’s taken – can and will make a difference.

Yours,

Samuel Lovett

Sports reporter