You might have to be of a certain age (like mine), but Louganis was one of the most famous of Olympic athletes of the late twentieth century, possibly rivaling Bruce (at the time, now Caitlyn) Jenner. He swept the gold medals in 3m springboard and 10m platform competition not just at the LA Olympics in 1984, but also in Seoul in 1988. The latter event became the locus of some controversy when it was disclosed after the event, in which he had struck his head on the platform causing a gash requiring five stitches, that he had been diagnosed as HIV-positive before the games. Those 1988 Olympics marked the end of a diving career extending as far back as the 1976 Montreal games, where Louganis first gained attention with a silver medal in the 10m platform.
Louganis has popped up in the public eye again, with a documentary on his career scheduled to premiere tonight on HBO. While much of the doc is expected to deal with those 1988 games, the program also purports to cover other aspects of his career, such as the general turmoil that accompanies such a career (particularly at such a young age), his experience coming out, and his return to the diving world as a mentor to young divers.
In an interview with NPR promoting the documentary, Louganis remarked on what he saw as one of the most important aspects of an athletic career he wants to share with his young charges:
I'm most concerned with aftercare because as an elite athlete you finish your career and then you're pretty young. When you retire from your sport then it's almost like you lose a part of yourself. You lose your identity ... I retired at 28 ... You know, making that transition is not always easy. It's like, "OK, now who am I? Who am I without my sport?"
Here's something that anyone who cares about the issue of brain trauma (like myself) has to grapple with in trying to address the responsibility of not just athletes, but fans of sport. The athletic career is, in many ways, addictive.
Think about it. The folks you see in the games you watch, whether college or pro football or basketball or baseball or the Olympics or World Cup or whatever you choose to name, have in most cases been playing whichever game you're watching most of their lives. And in all likelihood, those athletes who have made it to the big televised stages on which we see them perform have been garnering attention and acclaim for their athletic prowess from very young ages. That kind of attention becomes hard to live without when it's gone, and adjusting to its absence can become a difficult or traumatic experience of its own.
Little wonder, then, that athletes tend to stick around for as long as somebody will pay them to play, even if their skills are diminished beyond the point of competence or safety. What else are you going to do in your life that can possibly match the rush of adrenaline, provide the same glow of fame and adulation, and fatten the bank account so successfully as a good sports career?
Acting can theoretically be a lifelong career, but there are plenty of actors who flame out at a young age or fail to make the transition from young star to mature star. Still, for the most part, one's body doesn't force one to quit acting. After a certain point athletes simply can't compete any more.
Some are successful at making a transition into a career that keeps them around their sport, as a coach or perhaps a broadcaster. Still, there are plenty who have to transition into a "real life" of some sort, and who struggle with it as Louganis describes. And as noted above, there are plenty who stick around long after they should have hung it up.
This isn't something to which most of us can relate. In theory, if you launch into your career in your twenties, you can most likely (if you choose) continue in that career for decades. Even I, just starting a new vocation at age fifty, can reasonably guess that (barring a cancer recurrence or other such unexpected setback) continue in this vocation for a good twenty years or so. You can choose to give up that career as well, and do so with, most likely, only your friends and family and maybe co-workers being concerned about it, which can make it hard enough to do. Most of us don't do our work in front of maniacal cheering crowds on a weekly or nearly daily basis.
Remember: those crowds are us. We, the fans of these sports and athletes, are the ones who are paying the attention and spending the big bucks on tickets and replica jerseys and such. We're the ones whose attention or adulation becomes hard to give up. Not every fan is a face-painting maniac, by any means. Most of us aren't, in fact. But our attention, our fervor, our cheers and elation are part of the equation that makes the sporting career so hard to leave behind.
Sometimes that adulation becomes extreme for the athlete at a very early age, even before a professional career is an option. We happen to be upon the twentieth anniversary of the book Friday Night Lights, and its author Buzz Bissinger is back with an updated version of the book in which he follows up on some of the athletes from that team. In another NPR interview, Bissinger describes something very like the above, affecting athletes whose careers ended at age eighteen:
For a lot of these players [they have] sort of this glazed look in their eye saying, "What happened? What happened to the crowds? What happened to the attention?" Because no one is more lonely and isolated than a former player who comes back to the locker room. There's a pat on the back and the coach says, "Hey, it's great to see you, man," but then no one cares, nobody cares. They get shell-shocked.And that's not all. Don't miss his account of the post-football life of one Boobie Miles. Probably an extreme example, but chilling nonetheless.
It's one thing to see Willie Mays stumbling in the outfield in the 1973 World Series. It's quite another to see Muhammad Ali being pummeled into a shell of his former self. It's impossibly sad to see the high school star or college stud who can't get over the adulation when the career doesn't advance as it should. And yet the addictive, irresistible, seductive nature of professional athletic performance and fame makes it so, so hard to walk away, even if faced with the possibility that continuing to play can possibly lead to irreparable damage down the line. It may be in some ways easier for a young player like Chris Borland to walk away before the trauma has a chance to accumulate than for a veteran to let go of a game that has been his (in the NFL) life for potentially twenty to thirty years.
And there's a certain level of addictiveness or compulsion for many of us fans. Not all, by any means, but many. Being a responsible, mindful faithful fan can't possibly include the kind of abusive behavior that gets directed at some athletes, particularly those guilty of major gaffes at critical or highly viewed times. But there is also a stewardship of our passion involved. There is, or must be, a consideration of the human being on the field, whether or not that human being invites it or claims it, that does not forget that athlete's humanness and vulnerability, and does not demand their harm for our entertainment. This would seem obvious, although I'm not sure it is to many fans, even the "Christian" ones (even as I acknowledge the perils of that adjective).
But this is a different challenge. Aside from not being offered a contract or opportunity to play, there's nothing that can really force an athlete to quit. If a coach or teammate or family member can't persuade the athlete to walk away, what is there to be done? And after a career of dings and dents and concussions and subconcussive hits, it still mostly falls on the athlete making the decision to retire. And I don't know that there is much to be done about it, given that there's virtually no way to know how many hits is too many, at this point.
Ugh, no, I'm not putting up the picture of him hitting his head on the board...
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