For some people, there is a fear of being bound to one goal, to days filled with the same activities, weeks split up by the hours of “what, when, and where.” For others, the fear is the opposite. There are those who fear that suddenly, the walls of control and schedule will crumble, and they will be left standing in some space of unknown, surrounded by possibilities they can’t see.
An elite athlete is a well-trained, tightly-scheduled individual, whose mornings, afternoons, and evenings are bound by specific regimens to perfect her body’s performance. It is easy to imagine that after years of this kind of training, the schedule becomes a blanket of comfort, and suddenly, after the event or the career is over and that blanket is taken away, the athlete is confronted with an enormous feeling of loss, as if the identity she held after years of performing one task is no longer hers.
What becomes of Olympic athletes after the Games end? While we hear the stories of preparation and aspiration in the lead-up to the events, we seldom get a look at the next chapter.
My good friend Elise Laverick Sherwell retired from her sport of rowing after three Olympic cycles (Sydney, Athens, and Beijing) and two bronze medals in the double sculls (one in Beijing and one in Athens). She explains her decision:
Also, I don’t completely want that recognition. I want recognition for being good at something, not having been good at something. How long do you live off of having been good at something, when you no longer do it, and suddenly, there are people out there who are better than you? That wasn’t good enough for me.”
Elise has done well for herself after her rowing career, and credits her tremendously supportive home community for her post-Olympic success. Today, she is an attorney at a London firm and has begun the journey of motherhood with her nine-month-old daughter, Erin, who she calls her little gold medal.
But this post-Olympic career came with sacrifice, a constant balance between rigorous studies and rowing commitments, for which her non-rowing career always took the backseat. Elise studied two years at a time between Games until she earned her law degree and was hired in 2007 by a London firm, which contracted her for work six months after the Beijing Olympics.
After her Olympic career, Elise had to remind herself that she was never just “the rower,” and that she could eventually find something else that filled the tremendous hole she now felt. Elise explains about her experience looking back on the Games:
Another former Olympic rower from the 1988 Games in Seoul, Anne Martin, has similar sentiments. Anne says:
But Anne, unlike many other athletes, was able to keep her career moving while she was training for the Olympics. Even when she was competing in world championship events in 1985-1987, she never left her desk completely as an East Coast consultant. Anne says:
After her rowing career, Anne attended the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and is currently the Chief Investment Officer of Wesleyan University’s endowment.
But what has been the most challenging journey for both these elite athletes-turn-full-time-professionals? Elise would say that having Erin has taught her to work just as hard as her Olympic days, but without sleep. “You can’t just put her in a desk full of pillows like you would a medal when you’re tired!”
Anne describes raising her twin boys, now 17, as “driving a Maserati in a traffic jam,” but goes on to say that the key to managing the chaos of work, a deeply and continuing athletic passion, and family life is a responsibility balanced between both parents (her husband, John Pescatore, was also an Olympic rower).
Of course, despite the challenges these women faced in preparing for, competing in, and transitioning from the Olympics, they explain that they wouldn’t have wanted a different experience. For both Elise and Anne, competition and sports have been an outlet for an incredible energy that needed to be expressed in one way or other, either on the boat or in the office. I asked both women what their advice to young, elite athletes would be.
Elise responds:
For example, I found this year to be hard. People ask me, ‘Why aren’t you going for 2012?’ Whereas if I were at a law firm, no one asks, ‘Why have you moved firms?’ If you’re an athlete, it really seems like all these personal questions are fair game to the public. Expect that to happen, and move on.”
Anne’s advice is:
You just have to find a way where those personality characteristics have an outlet that is close to what you were doing but different enough, so you can be on a different learning curve and feel like you are gaining something new in life.”
While Elise and Anne both look at their lives as an everyday search for the next everyday challenge, their stories bring deep wisdom and comfort to the women of 2012. Their continued passion and energy extends beyond the sport, and it is in this reincarnation of athleticism that we are all propelled forward, by example, in what defines a strong, independent, and confident woman. We thank you for this.
Want more? Read about these other athletes’ road to the Olympics.
