His name already seemed like an omen that his story would have to be linked to snow despite hating the cold. Blanca Fernández Ochoa, who would be 60 today, was the woman who taught Spain that winter sports exist and who catapulted the mountains to fame after a bronze slalom that tasted gold at the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics. The first Spanish Olympic medalist successfully overcame several obstacles during her sports career, but after giving up skiing, another difficult winding path began, that of mental health. «Ordinary people should know that their great idols also go to the psychologist; you have to work on mental health and not stigmatize it. Normalize asking for help, “says Lola Fernández Ochoa, sister of the best Spanish skier of all time, found dead in 2019 in the Sierra de Guadarrama.
“Ordinary people should know that their great idols also go to the psychologist, we must normalize asking for help”
Lola Fernández Ochoa, president of the White Foundation for Athlete Support
She chairs the Fundación Blanca, established a year ago with the aim of helping elite athletes once they retire and facilitating the connection with the following stages of their lives, those in which once the lights go out no one wants to leave. the photo. «Blanca did not want to go to the psychologist out of shame, in case she was labeled crazy. That was the main problem we had, that we didn’t force him to ask for that help,” says the little girl from the Fernández Ochoa clan, the soul and common thread of the documentary ‘El viaje. The Mental Health Medal’. In it, in addition to remembering her story, several elite athletes speak openly about a taboo subject for years and that is usually suffered in silence.
Visibility of suicide
When Blanca disappeared, her brothers knew they would have to prepare for the worst. The skier’s suicide plans had been flying for some time and now her family deals with the issue with total clarity, without any stigma. “I begged her many times not to do it, but she didn’t,” recalls Lola, who says that her sister did not see herself as everyone saw her. Thirteen years before leaving, she left her brother Paco -the first Spanish Olympic gold medalist- because of cancer. She never recovered from the blow. It was the most complicated slalom of hers. Her older brother and her hero knew that it was her weakness and told her a lot to laugh once a day at her part, if possible out loud. She did what she could, although many already knew of that sadness that she showed in her blue eyes.
«When many athletes retire they feel a void that can lead them to become lazy or depressed»
Juan Carlos Álvarez Campillo, coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Coaching and Sports Psychology at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR)
One of the protagonists of the documentary is the mountaineer Edurne Pasaban, the first woman to climb the 14 eight-thousanders, whose depression led her to attempt suicide three times. The former gymnast Almudena Cid also emphasizes the importance of training the psychological part of the athlete: «The loneliness of the athlete causes you to be your best company and your worst enemy. You have to say I need help », indicates the author of ‘Walking without toes’, a book in which she tells of her healing process both in her sporting life and in her sentimental life. All have been pioneers in various fields throughout their careers. The same as Ruth Beitia, another of the faces participating in the filming. The high jumper she discovered through sports psychology a new world that she began to take care of her by feeling tremendous pressure after jumping two meters for the first time. “I learned to channel my anxieties and my nervousness, giving the right importance to each moment,” she explains in a recent interview.
a parallel plan
«When many retire they feel a void, and a certain loneliness; so it is important to think about new projects or challenges that excite them and that may or may not be related to sport. Otherwise they can fall into laziness, neglect, bad influences and even depression. That is why preparing for this new stage is crucial, and that is also worked on and trained, just like when they were active and competed,” explains Juan Carlos Álvarez Campillo, coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Coaching and Sports Psychology at the International University of La Rioja. (BIND). What the expert is talking about is precisely what the Blanca Foundation works for, which does not understand elite sport without a parallel psychological preparation, with support, lines of action and training in addition to visibility. «You have to prepare the athlete for normal life, on a day-to-day basis many have only been trained to carry out a sports discipline. They don’t know how to do anything else and there they must not only reinvent themselves but also know how to manage their emotions or adversities”, admits Lola, who delves into the vital thing that there is a person who tells the athlete that “the beautiful period they are going through has an expiration time”, which encourages you to train and acts as a promoter of different lines of action that you can take.
Lola recalls in the documentary the times when she shared a room in a boarding school in the Aran Valley with Blanca, an imposed obsession with which she cried a lot: “Some enlightened man thought that skiing could be something genetic.” She suffered away from her family, but she understood that her destiny was to slide through the snow. She does not forget the subsequent enthusiasm and neither does the sadness on the days when Blanca had no strength at all. She did not understand the reason for her attitude changes, which oscillated in 24 hours. She thought she was “a weird girl.” But there came a day when everything changed, and they began to understand what was happening. She suffered from bipolarity, a disease that began to justify her sudden changes and which she did not manifest until adulthood. And suddenly, the day came when the athlete couldn’t take it anymore, she didn’t know how to manage her emotions, and in 2019, after four days missing, they found her lifeless body. While she competed at the highest level and won different awards, Blanca lived with a mental illness that no one saw and for which she did not ask for help.
Blanca did not waste any time to claim the difficulties that women continue to have to achieve dreams and success. “Everything I have achieved in life has been based on a lot of effort and sacrifice,” she highlighted on several occasions. From 1980 to 1992 she moved at the highest level: four victories in the World Cup, twenty podiums, one Olympic bronze that she tasted like gold and one European championship. She was the bearer of the Olympic flag in Barcelona 92, Reina Sofía Award for the best Spanish athlete, National Sports Award, Gold Medal of the Royal Order of Sports Merit… She started skiing when she was only six years old and stood out when she was thirteen . Her surroundings were girls 18 and up.
2023-04-22 04:56:43
#slalom #mental #health
