So there’s almost an inevitability with it, a little bit.
You’re not gonna come out of a professional sports career unscathed. You might be physically fit but you won’t be unscathed.
And that could be a physical injury, and the results of that physical injury and what it’s done to your life, or it could be that, almost PTSD or something, y’know. Just like, sometimes you feel like you’ve gone to war, and sometimes you feel like you didn’t win that war. (laughs)
Bit of an aside from last night when I was doing my regular midnight physical salvage session, and watching the film High Stakes on GCN+ (yup, I actually threw down cash for a year's subscription to watch a bunch of white dudes talk about bikes). Martyn Ashton, who is a very funny, very talented rider who uses a wheelchair after wrecking his back (for the second time), when he talks about physical and mental injuries as an athlete is someone I have a lot of time for.
He said something I've been trying to put into words for a very long time, which applies to dance — also a professional sports career — as much as it does to cycling or climbing, all three I've devoted a lot of my life to at various times. And from the beginning I have struggled with that inevitable double bind of physically fit but not unscathed.