IT’S OFTEN SAID sportspeople will die twice, and retirement is the first of their two deaths; but the vast majority of us will never be able to relate to life after sport, nor understand it.
An intangible feeling, just something we hear about but can never really experience. The lack of direction, the void left by what’s gone before and the uncertainty of what’s to come.
Once the flame has flickered, extinguished and the curtain drawn, it can be difficult for athletes to find a new purpose, a new identity. When all you’ve known is a structured lifestyle shaped around a regimented training programme, life without the comfort of a routine can prove to be problematic.
The anxiety, fear and emotional crash often associated with retirement is hard to comprehend from the outside but depression and mental health issues are the dark side of sport.
On the homepage of David Gillick’s website, there’s a video titled ‘I Am Gillick’ which was shot and produced ahead of the 2008 Olympics. It’s only two minutes long but you’re instantly drawn to Gillick’s unwavering work rate and determination to be the best he can be.
“You’ve got a shelf life. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do in that short number of years you’ve got,” he says to the camera. “I want to be able to come off the track and look myself in the mirror and say ‘yeah Gillick you’ve done alright like.’”
At this point, he was a two-time European Indoor 400m gold medallist but there was a hunger there for more. An insatiable appetite for perfection, because athletics was his life. It was who he was.
In those two minutes, it was perfectly clear who David Gillick was. He was one of Ireland’s most accomplished athletes. Those indoor titles in 2005 and 2007 were the crowning moment of a career which also saw him finish sixth in a world 400m final and set a national record of 44.77 that’s unlikely to be broken for some time.
But when Gillick walked away from the sport in May 2013, he was physically and mentally drained. The injuries, the rigours, the demands and the pressure had all taken its toll. He hated athletics, and moving on and leaving it all behind was almost seen as a welcome relief.
In research recently conducted by Dr David Fletcher, a researcher in performance psychology at Loughborough University — the college Gillick used to train in, a loss of identity was outlined as one of the commonly cited reasons why athletes struggle with mental health problems in retirement.
By its very nature, sport can be insular and athletics, in particular, is an isolated existence, which requires certain levels of self-absorption and a selfish single-mindedness. Sleep, train, race, repeat. Every waking minute is spent thinking about athletics and everything is measured and quantified with the one, narrow focus of shaving another second off that clock.
But when all that disappears, and the next chapter arrives, there can be a profound sense of loss and that void is very hard to fill.
From the outside, it appeared Gillick had made a seamless transition into the real world. He took up an offer to appear on Celebrity Masterchef and went on to win the competition, sparking a new career and the publication of a best-selling cook book.
There were other things which kept him busy, too. He returned to his GAA roots with Ballinteer St Johns and was a regular contributor to RTE’s athletics coverage. A bubbly character, Gillick had readjusted to life after sport and was thriving post-athletics.
The reality, however, was very different.
“I knew things weren’t right when I first retired and I hoped those kind of feelings would pass when I started working and everything would be okay,” he tells The42.
“When I initially retired I panicked because I didn’t know what to do. I jumped at the first job (distributing running shoes) that came my way and even though I enjoyed elements of the work, I just wasn’t happy.
“I wasn’t happy with my day-to-day life and found it hard to get stimulated by anything. Nothing really excited me and I was just constantly in a negative mood. I used to idolise my past, I’d be constantly looking back thinking ‘I wish I was doing this’ or ‘I wish I was back in England training away’ and then you’d switch to the future and worry about what will I be doing in 10 years time? How am I going to keep a roof over my head? Am I always going to be this unhappy?
“They were the thoughts I was having and I wouldn’t exercise because I was unhappy. I couldn’t be bothered going out for a run and they were the triggers that set me on a downward spiral.”
As time passed, Gillick sank deeper and deeper into a black hole of emptiness. He was locked up in his own thoughts, silently suffering and searching for a way out — but he didn’t want help.
Sportspeople are often perceived to be fitter, stronger and tougher individuals than everyone else. Gillick didn’t feel he needed to speak to anyone. He didn’t want to admit he was weak and lost.
“There were dark places and dark times and I wasn’t a very happy person,” he continues.
“I hated Sundays, I used to dread the week that was coming and as someone young that’s not great to be wishing the time away. Things weren’t great for a number of years and the people around me knew I wasn’t in a great place and I wasn’t happy but whenever they said ‘oh David maybe you should go and talk to someone, my reaction was to tell them to shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about’ and these were people that were only looking out for me.
“It took me a while to accept that they were right and I needed to do something. Your ego plays a bit of a role in it too. You think you’re right and you know best and that nobody’s going to tell me what to do attitude.
“Coming off a career when I’ve won a couple of things, coming off the track you feel you need to be successful. You need to be successful and that’s one thing I struggled with. I thought people had this perception of me that I was going to be successful off the track and that put a lot of initial pressure and expectation.
“I struggled to get my head around that as I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I couldn’t express that because I was a bit weak.”
Athletics had battered, bruised and scarred him mentally as much as physically. The sacrifices demanded by greatness had pushed him to breaking point, and running was no longer an outlet. He didn’t want anything to do with it, but deep down he needed it.
He adds: “I thought I could just step away from it and get on with the rest of my life but I struggled an awful lot. I had regrets and all those feelings – frustration, anger and I was in that ditch of desperation and depression and I didn’t really know what I was going to do next.
“I’d get awfully angry with myself. It’s very easy to put a brave face on and I was doing that every single day. It was a vicious circle. I’d resent everything, resent athletics, thinking if I didn’t do it then I wouldn’t be in this position. You can think some scary thoughts.”
In December 2015, Gillick had plunged to his lowest ebb. With his wife, Charlotte, expecting their first child, life was moving on but he was unable to keep up. In his own words, he was completely and utterly lost, operating in a daze.
But the arrival of Oscar changed everything. He had a new responsibility and the Ballinteer native knew something, anything, had to change. He needed to talk to someone and unload the problems which were causing such torment.
“I had to get on top of this because it wasn’t fair on her and it wasn’t fair on bringing a baby into this world if I wasn’t in the right space,” he admits.
“It put the onus on me to take control of my own personal issues. I didn’t want to be the priority anymore and that might sound a bit selfish but as an individual athlete, everything you do revolves around your athletics and sport.
“You’re quite selfish and very single-minded. When Charlotte was pregnant it forced me to take control because it changed my perspective. It forced me to calm down a bit and forced me to be present because there was times when I wasn’t.”
The main problem was athletics. An achilles tendon ultimately forced him to cut his career short at the age of 30. His final race was a last-place finish in Moscow in June 2012. At the time he revealed there were regrets, and they only grew louder in his head as time passed and he became increasingly fascinated by his past.
Gillick didn’t bow out of the sport he loved on his own terms, and as he longed for those bygone glory days, he had convinced himself he hated athletics. He would avoid it at all costs to such an extent that he couldn’t even face going out for a run. He couldn’t bring himself to watch or follow the events he felt he should still be competing in. He was stuck in the past, trapped in his former life.
“It’s very hard for other people to relate to it,” Gillick says. “In terms of athletics you’re very much your own person and you can be isolated from other people and it can be hard to get across how you’re feeling because not a whole lot of people can relate to it.
“The difference with a team sport is that you have people with you who have been with you for the last number of years on the same team and journey. You have people around you who you can relate to. In individual sports you feel you can’t open up to people because they won’t understand and that can be the driver that stops people expressing how you feel.
“It’s a very up and down road and I tried to shut athletics out of my life but like any addiction, it’s very hard to go completely off it. I came to that realisation and that it has been in my blood since I was seven. It’s not going to change and I needed to realise that.
“It was nothing more than a case of me saying ‘David look you have to move on with your life’ and athletics had defined me for the last 15 years so it was something that I realised still did define me. There was no point pretending it didn’t.”
Counselling followed, but Gillick’s return to running was the turning point.
Last year, he took the first step in tackling his demons by putting the spikes on again. It was purely to get out of the house and occupy the mind. He had no intention to race or compete but as winter turned to spring, his gentle return became something more.
Sport has that ability. It offers an outlet. For Gillick, it allowed him to get back on the straight and narrow. Go out and run and forget about the problems and worries for an hour, or two. It helped the pieces to fall into place again.
Gillick’s first meet back was a low-key event in Pavia, a small town in northern Italy, last May. He had convinced the organisers to allow him to enter and paid for his own way over.
“I was scared, I was scared shitless,” he recalls. “I was thinking to myself, even when I was warming up, why am I doing this? I’m too old for this, why am I here?
“Because you get that anxiety and nervousness but then I just said you know what I feel alive, I feel alive today.”
Everything felt different. There was no pressure, no analysis, no eye on the clock. He just wanted to run, and enjoy it. A time of 48.05 seconds over 400m was well off the pace but it didn’t matter. He got around in one piece and had conquered his fears.
As the summer progressed, Gillick’s return gathered momentum and the spark returned. His love for life and athletics was reignited, and a strong showing at the national championships secured him a place at the European Championships on the Irish 4x400m relay team. The green singlet again.
“Going back to say goodbye to the sport on my own terms was something I think I needed to do,” he explains.
“I needed to go back to athletics and face my demons because that was causing me a few issues. Even my own event, the 400m, that event bruised me and scarred me. I needed to take that challenge head on and just get around one lap of the track and move on.”
Gillick had a new lease of life and the shackles were off. He had come a full circle and was back doing something he loved out of pure passion. Nothing more, nothing less — and suddenly Rio became a possibility.
The Irish quartet of Brian Gregan, Craig Lynch, Thomas Barr and Gillick advanced to the European Championships final and knew a time of run 3:04.25 or faster would secure their place at the 2016 Olympics. But they fell agonisingly short and missed out by just seven hundredths of a second.
Having come so close, it was heartbreaking but, at the same time, failure to qualify may just have been a blessing in disguise in the context of Gillick’s life. Of course, he would have loved to go to Rio as an athlete but when that door closed, another one opened.
For the duration of the Games, he stood on the opposite side of the fence at Rio’s Olympic Stadium, and with microphone in hand for RTE, he had to face his demons from another angle.
“I was anxious as to how I would feel out there because deep down, to be honest with you, when I look at my career I always thought Rio would be my swansong and when I would call it a day. That was the ideal scenario,” he adds.
“How was I going to feel and would I get that feeling in the stomach thinking that should be me out there racing.
“A few months previous, that would have been really really tough. The very thought of going to any athletics event and actually watching it would have been like putting daggers in my eyes. It was just something I couldn’t find it in myself to go and watch athletics. I should have been out there, I should have been doing that.
“But thankfully I didn’t get that which told me I was very comfortable being on that side of the track. That gave me confidence that I was in a good place and I really enjoyed it.”
Gillick’s happy family life was playing its part, too. The arrival of Oscar gave him a new focus and although he’s still in that transitional phase as he fully immerses himself into life after sport, Gillick has found a balance. It’s very much a case of one step at a time.
“It’s about being grateful for what I have,” he adds. “There was a time when I wasn’t grateful for the career I had or I wasn’t grateful for being healthy, having healthy parents and having a healthy wife.
“Last year made me realise a lot and it was a season I thought I’d never have. I was grateful for that and my 14 month old son is now the number one priority now. I’m enjoying my running and I plan to race again this summer but I’ve no expectations.
“It’s great to come a full circle and enjoy athletics again the way I did as a kid but the main thing for me now is to be a good parent, a good Dad and a good husband.
“When you’ve Oscar crawling around the kitchen floor, your sole focus is on him and when he’s looking at you looking for his lunch that’s all that matters. It has forced me to slow down a little bit more and not get too caught up with the past or the future.
“I’ll be running until the day I die and I’ll want my kids to run but it’s no longer something I beat myself up about. There’s a lot to be said for getting out there and doing things with a smile on your face whether it’s in an event or in your local park.
“Retirement has taught me that. Just be grateful for what you have and be happy.”
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If you need to talk, contact:
- Samaritans 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org
- Aware 1800 80 48 48 (depression, anxiety)
- Pieta House 1800 247 247 or email mary@pieta.ie – (suicide, self-harm)
- Teen-Line Ireland 1800 833 634 (for ages 13 to 19)
- Childline 1800 66 66 66 (for under 18s)
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