When the crowd falls silent: what comes after Olympic glory? 

Transitioning from a highly structured life as an international athlete to retirement is often long and challenging. Two  former Olympians reflect on their experience  

Kellie Harrington, at her homecoming on Kilkenny St Dublin. Photo Julien Behal,

FOR Kellie Harrington, retirement seemed as sweet as bagging an Olympic medal. Within minutes of securing boxing gold at the Paris Games, she announced she was signing off. But for another Olympic star, it took much longer to ease into a different phase after a life in sport.

David Gillick has been garlanded far and wide for his expert athletics commentary on RTÉ and, in particular, for his empathetic trackside interviews. But then, he knows the travails of the Olympic athlete. His efforts in Beijing 2008 didn’t quite reach the heights of his indoor 400m career, but the Ballinteer native still had the miles in his legs, only retiring in 2013. But, he says, the process of finding a new life took him three years, almost a full Olympic cycle.

“People talk about the ‘Olympic blues’,” Gillick says. “Right now there will be an awful lot of athletes evaluating where they are going for the next four years.”

Olympian, pundit and podcaster David Gillick.

For Harrington, there was a clear sense that she had an eye on retirement if everything went to plan. When she secured her second Olympic gold medal, she practically bounced out of the ring, telling her interviewer at ringside: “I’m done. I always wanted to retire a champion. Bob’s your uncle. Fanny’s your aunt. Good night Irene.”

Yet research indicates that the process of retiring can be as challenging, if not harder, than those gruelling training regimens and dawn starts.

British charity Switch the Play supports sportspeople adapting to life outside sport, and has worked with more than 1,000 people last year.

A growing body of research suggests that stepping away from top-level sport can result in mental health difficulties and, in some cases, a loss of a sense of identity, alongside the disappearance of structures and programmes that come with high-performance activity.

Gillick had been a full-time athlete and was able to “pay the bills”, as he puts it.

“I was able to sustain full-time training and a certain lifestyle — not every athlete can do that, I was lucky,” he says. “I had a won a couple of medals and that gave me that platform. But the reality is you wake up one morning and that is all gone.”

The father of three admits that it was the routine that he missed the most — “having a purpose, having a clear goal, running 44 seconds, ‘I’ve 10 months to get my shit together for next summer’, and everything is broken down from that and you work back from that in four-week blocks. That is where the comedown really hit me. You wake up and think, ‘What do I do now?’”

He’s not a huge fan of the word ‘transition’, but that reckoning with a new life away from full-time sport is a long process. Gillick says he “rushed into things” on retirement, and what he took on did not fill the gap. Another factor, he believes, was the unique nature of sport as a career — the structures around it but also how it reached a crescendo around major championships, and then the unmatchable adrenaline rush of competing in front of full stadia, contending among the elite for medals. How does real life compete with that?

Eoin Rheinisch says support offered by Sport Ireland Institute can help athletes move on from competing. Picture: Brendan Moran

Retire on whose terms?

Eoin Rheinisch knows the feeling. A three-time Olympian in canoe slalom and now a coach, he is also head of performance life skills at the Sport Ireland Institute - a role that allows him to prepare the pathway for sportspeople looking beyond the last race or match.

“I definitely struggled with it,” Rheinisch says of his own move away from top-level sport. “I was fortunate in that I had a long career, 15 years at a high level.”

However, he adds: “I think the longer you’re in it the more chance that your self-identify becomes wrapped up in you as an athlete, and that is quite a dangerous position to be in. After London [2012], I retired and found it very tough and it was the support from former bosses and people doing job I am currently doing which made the difference for me.”

Both Gillick and Rheinisch agree that the manner in which people arrive at retirement can have a bearing on how easy or difficult it is.

Gillick says of Harrington: “Kellie had a clear plan in her head that ‘if I win a gold medal, I am done’.

“This is one of the key issues of retirement — on whose terms? It is a luxury to be able to do it on your own terms. A lot of athletes don’t get that.”

The biggest factor in an enforced retirement is injury, something he knows only too well. Too many missed events, and sponsorship can dry up, and fundamental questions need to be asked.

“You start thinking, ‘Am I fooling myself here?’” Gillick says.

According to Rheinisch, the research on it is clear: “If you are forced to retire or have an unplanned retirement due to injury or a lack of funding rather than if it’s on your own terms, that could make athlete retirement very challenging.”

As for the loss of identity, he refers to Ireland’s most successful Olympian, Paul O’Donovan, as a case study on preparing for life after racing. The lightweight rower isn’t calling time on his stellar career any time soon, but as Rheinisch points out, O’Donovan has continued his studies throughout, wrapping up a degree in medicine last year: “He has this whole other identity as part of him.”

“The more rounded you can make your identity as an athlete, the easier that retirement becomes.”

Retirement can be a long time coming, or it can arrive all of a sudden — either way, Rheinisch says, preparation is vital. He acknowledges that in previous decades, “you really were on your own”, but now the programmes offered by the Sport Ireland Institute mean support is readily available. Its performance life skills team has four members, including Rheinisch, each with different backgrounds covering areas such as corporate learning and development, third-level education, and career guidance. That team works alongside a separate unit that offers psychological support.

Finding the next step

While Olympic athletes are now evaluating themselves and their performances ahead of another four-year cycle, and asking themselves ‘What shape will I be in come 2028?’, members of the institute’s support team have already been making regular contact with those who did not qualify for the 2024 Games — some of whom may well be asking themselves similar questions. On the most practical level, a programme for long-standing athletes means that on retirement, they will receive a further 50% on top of their final year’s annual funding. This ‘parachute payment’ is designed to ease any financial issues as they leave the track and enter the real world — even if that could mean continuing in sport in coaching or another related role for many.

Gillick eventually found his way and couldn’t be happier. He laughs when it’s put to him, tongue in cheek, that while it’s great to receive all the praise for his trackside interviews, to paraphrase Roy Keane, ‘He was only doing his job’.

“It is 100% a privileged position,” he says of his Olympics gig, remarking on the vulnerability that some athletes — even the biggest names who stopped by to have a word with him, like Dutch track and field athlete Femke Bol and Norwegian long-distance runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen — showed immediately after races they have waited for years to run. But then the Olympics is like that, everything building to an epic finale after years of blood, sweat and tears.

And for a man very happy with his lot, even he admits that sometimes, the memories come flooding back.

“There are still races that I run through my head,” he says.