Athletes and Coaches through the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative View of Goal Management

Elite athletes: what lessons for the future can be learned from their responses to the social disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic?

In mid-March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic was declared, disrupting established routines and impacting every aspect of our lives. Sport as a social phenomenon was no exception. On the one hand, with the suspension and postponement of competitions and the various restrictions, the pandemic seemed to stop time, destroying the previously familiar ways of functioning of the sports sector, and forcing it to constantly reinvent, restructure and adapt. On the other hand, the changed situation highlighted the problems and inequalities that sport had faced long before and that the pandemic had mostly exacerbated, but not caused. In this review article, we identify the lessons and insights the pandemic has brought, especially for elite athletes. Because many scientific articles have emerged in connection with the pandemic, we select and review them according to our focus on elite athletes and summarise their findings. We then use those findings to derive guidelines that can serve top athletes as a tool in potentially similar situations in the future. Our proposed guidelines are divided into macro-, meso-, and micro-social levels, encompassing national and international, organizational and individual perspectives.

Pandemic-specific coping, anxiety, and depression across multiple waves of COVID-19 in elite athletes with disabilities

Objectives

Competitive athletes have faced many of the same mental health challenges experienced by the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of the current study was to examine the extent to which pandemic-specific coping predicted anxiety and depression over and above general coping styles in elite athletes with disabilities across multiple waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

Participants were 91 athletes (60 men and 31 women) in the Polish Paralympic Preparation Program before the 2020 Tokyo Summer Paralympic Games and 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympic Games. The Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations and an open-ended item asking participants to describe coping resources they had used to overcome stressful situations caused by the pandemic were administered in April 2021, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale was administered in April, July, and November of 2021.

Results

General coping styles were not significantly associated with pandemic-specific coping, anxiety, or depression in the July and November 2021 assessments. Pandemic-specific coping was related prospectively to both anxiety and depression across the July and November 2021 assessments when controlling for age, gender, general coping styles, and April 2021 anxiety and depression, respectively.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that elite athletes with disabilities may cope with pandemic-related stress differently from how they cope with stress in general and that pandemic-specific coping may be relevant to mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. This information may be useful in the development of interventions to assist elite athletes with disabilities cope with pandemics and other atypical stressors.

Changes in the Mental Health Indicators and Training Opportunities for Estonian Elite Athletes Compared to the COVID-19 Isolation Period

Background: In spring 2020, two-thirds of Estonian elite athletes had symptoms of emotional distress. The aim of this study was to evaluate the mental health indicators and training opportunities for elite Estonian athletes a year after the complete COVID-19 isolation period compared to June 2020. Methods: In both cross-sectional studies, athletes completed self-reported questionnaires, including the Emotional State Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and Chi2 tests were applied to compare the study groups (p < 0.05). Results: A total of 172 out of approximately 600 elite Estonian athletes participated in the survey (102 in 2020 and 70 in 2021). More than a year after the COVID-19 lockdown period, the mental health problems of elite athletes (particularly the symptoms of depression and fatigue) are even greater concern than in June 2020, despite the recovery in training conditions and competition. Of all of the subjects, 80% had high levels of distress in 2021 compared to 36% in 2020. According to the athletes, the availability of health care services was good (78.6%), but there was a lack of close cooperation with the coach. However, the athletes considered their coaches to be their main supporters, along with their family members and partners. Only 4.3% of the respondents considered a sports psychologist to be their main supporter (n = 6). Conclusions: More than a year after the COVID-19 lockdown period, the mental health indicators of Estonian elite athletes were worrisome. Most of subjects had high levels of distress even though their training conditions had returned to normal (i.e., to as they had been before COVID-19).