Last summer, a shift in professional athletes openly addressing the topic of their bouts with mental health issues began to take hold to a degree not seen, beginning with tennis phenom Naomi Osaka withdrawing from the French Open, citing her struggles with depression and anxiety.
Not long after, it was Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, who stepped back from participating in a number of events she had qualified for at the Tokyo Olympics. She acknowledged feeling as if the “weight of the world” rested on her shoulders because of the unrelenting pressure to excel.
The topic opened a wide debate in the sports world and beyond, with some critics deriding their decisions to prioritize their well-being as dramatic and unbecoming of those expected to perform. But many others rallied around the pair, including swimmer Michael Phelps, the most decorated athlete in Olympic history. He has been open about his own battles in the face of high expectations.
“I hope this is an opportunity for us to jump on board and to even blow this mental health thing even more wide open,” Phelps said during an NBC broadcast shortly after Biles pulled out of the gymnastics team finals. “Nobody is perfect. It’s OK to not be OK.”
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And now, as he called for this past July, fellow Olympians are carrying the torch forward — bringing the conversation even further into the mainstream during the Beijing Games.
Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin was disqualified from her first two races after missing a gate early during the giant slalom and then the slalom, her best event. It was a disappointing start for the Olympic gold medalist and four-time world champion, who has won 47 World Cup slalom races — a record in that discipline — and who rarely skied out of races.
For a long while after the second race, she sat on the edge of the race course, her elbows resting on her knees and head down.
“I feel really bad,” she said on an NBC broadcast afterward, with tears in her eyes. “It makes me second-guess, like, the last 15 years. Everything I thought I knew about my own skiing and slalom and racing mentality.”
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After her father, Jeff Shiffrin, died after an accident in Colorado in 2020, she questioned whether she would return to the sport. Shiffrin told NBC he was a constant companion at her races, snapping photos of her in action everywhere from Sochi to PyeongChang.
After the slalom, she said the loss was hitting her especially hard.
“Right now, I would really like to call him,” Shiffrin said. “That doesn’t make it easier. He would probably tell me to just get over it, but he is not here to say that, so, on top of everything else, I am pretty angry at him, too.”
But on Friday, she completed her first race at the Winter Games, the super-G. In an Instagram post, which featured an image of Shiffrin skiing, she wrote, “The girl who failed … could also fly.”
“It’s wonderful to train and compete alongside all of these courageous and incredible women, who have overcome so much in their life, just to get here,” Shiffrin wrote. “But being here can really hurt, too. There’s a lot of disappointment and heartbreak going around in the finish area, but there’s also a lot of support.
“Sending my love to those who are feeling that striking hurt of defeat … only let it beat you down for a little bit, and then you stand up again and throw a few punches back,” she added. “Today was a good day, so I’m just gonna let it be that.”
Shiffrin was not the only American Olympian speaking out about mental health at the Beijing Olympics. After snowboarder Chloe Kim clinched her second gold medal in the halfpipe with a stunning first run, she spoke to reporters about the biggest lesson she learned following her first Olympics: “Being as open as possible.”
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“It’s unfair to be expected to be perfect. And I’m not perfect in any way,” Kim said. “But I think after my last Olympics, I put that pressure on myself to be perfect at all times. And that would cause a lot of issues at home. I would be really sad and depressed all the time when I was home. I was hurting the people I love the most by doing that.”
The biggest challenge for her now, Kim said, is to continue sharing as much as she can with others about what she is experiencing.
“I hope that maybe one day a little girl can hear my story and be inspired to be, you know, to keep going, to never give up, to learn that it’s OK to have a bad day — that you can move on and that you’ll come out in a better place at the end of it all,” she said. “So that’s been my goal.”
Kim said that it has been “really healthy” to “let it all out and let everyone know what’s going through my mind.”
“Everyone goes through something. Everyone’s dealing with stuff. And I think in my experience, whenever someone opens up to me about what they’re experiencing, it makes me feel much more at ease and makes me feel more comfortable,” she said. “Life isn’t easy at all times, and that’s OK.”
Shannon Larson can be reached at shannon.larson@globe.com. Follow her @shannonlarson98.