Biles and Osaka: The super-winner weight of the expectations

Feeling the weight of the world and not being able to shake it off or living with the duty of holding up any pressure are these the devils that two successful women like Simon Biles and Naomi Osaka carry inside. Talking about them as successful women is also little compared to what they represent. In fact, they belong to that small group of people who are often remembered as super-winners. These are planetary-level athletes, serial winners, not winning often but almost always. The world asks them to meet all kinds of expectations that business, their States, the media and their followers demand of them. At the same time, however, all this must not distract them from leading the life as an athlete, made up of thousands of hours of training each year, injury management, constant travel and, above all, competitions to keep winning. And then it can happen to hear statements such as that of Naomi Osaka, who said about her defeat at the Olympics: “For me every defeat is a disappointment, but today I feel that this disappointment sucks more than the others … The pressure on me here is so much, but I am at my first Olympics, and I was not able to handle this pressure. Along the same lines, Simon Biles responded to a question about what had been the happiest moment of his career, saying, “Honestly, probably my time off.”

These female athletes (but so are the men) are captive to their expectations of perfection and a mental approach to competitions that does not include defeat. The stress generated by this absolute conception of sport, and ultimately of one’s life, that does not include compromises or alternatives to victory plays a special role in the development of mental disorders, especially depression. Scientific research has shown that such totalizing expectations are dysfunctional, since they determine a perception of personal identity based on a single interest and not on a plurality of factors. In psychology, the concept of immunization has been introduced, which describes any strategy implemented by the person to reduce the effects of this absolute conception. This means that alongside the perception of themselves as a winning athlete, other ideas of themselves as bearers of other interests must be placed. In this way, the main focus remains the success of the sporting career but is integrated into a broader and equally valid idea of themselves. Thus, feeling like a more interest-rich person is the most effective way to contemplate defeat not as a loss of oneself but as a realistic event that one is able to overcome.