As the Winter Olympic Games approach, the United States team is helping its athletes to focus on mental health, prioritise sleep, and resilience over medals.
If winning gold medals were the only standard, almost all Olympic athletes would be considered failures.
Emily Clark, a clinical psychologist with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), will help athletes interpret what it means to be successful once the Winter Games open in Italy on 6 February.
Part of a 15-member team providing psychological services, Clark supports athletes accustomed to triumph but who invariably risk failure.
The team deals with mental health and performance, including topics such as motivation, anger management, anxiety, eating disorders, family issues, trauma, depression, sleep, handling pressure, and travel.
Clark's speciality includes stress management, the importance of sleep, and getting high achievers to perform at their best and avoid the temptation of looking only at results.
“A lot of athletes these days are aware of the mental health component of, not just sport, but of life,” she told The Associated Press. “This is an area where athletes can develop skills that can extend a career, or make it more enjoyable.”
Redefining success
The United States is expected to take about 235 athletes to the Winter Olympics and about 70 to the Paralympics.
“Most of the athletes who come through Team USA will not win a gold medal," Clark said. "That’s the reality of elite sport."
The United States won gold medals in nine events in the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022.
Clark said she often delivers the following message to Olympians and Paralympians: This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Focus on the process. Savour the moment.
“Your job is not to win a gold medal, your job is to do the thing, and the gold medal is what happens when you do your job,” she said.
“Some of this might be realigning what success looks like," she added. “And some of this is developing resilience in the face of setbacks and failure.”
Clark preaches staying on task under pressure and improving through defeat.
“We get stronger by pushing ourselves to a limit where we're at our maximum capacity — and then recovering," she said. “When we get stressed, it impacts our attention. Staying on task or staying in line with what’s important is what we try to train for.”
Mental health services in the United States team
Kendall Gretsch has won four gold medals at the Summer and Winter Paralympics and she credits some of her success to the USOPC’s mental health services.
“We have a sports psychologist who travels with us for most of our season,” she said. “Just being able to touch base with them ... and getting that reminder of why you are here. What is that experience you’re looking for?”
American figure skater Alysa Liu, the 2025 world champion and sixth in the 2022 Olympics, is also a big believer in sports psychology.
“I work with a sports psychologist,” she said without giving a name. “She’s incredible – like the MVP.”
Of course, MVP stands – not for Most Valuable Person or Most Valuable Player – for “Most Valuable Psychologist.”
The importance of sleep
“Sleep is an area where athletes tend to struggle for a number of reasons,” Clark said, listing issues such as travel schedules, late practices, injuries, and life-related stress.
“We have a lot of athletes who are parents, and a lot of sleep is going to be disrupted in the early stages of parenting,” she said. “We approach sleep as a real part of performance. But it can be something that gets de-prioritised when days get busy.”
Clark suggests the following for her athletes – and the rest of us: no caffeine after 3 p.m., reduce stress before bedtime, maintain a regular sleep schedule, sleep in a dark room, and get seven to nine hours of sleep every night.
“Sleep is the cornerstone of healthy performance,” she added.
Dani Aravich is a two-time Paralympian – she’s been in both the Summer and Winter Games – will be skiing in the upcoming Paralympics. She said in a recent interview that she regularly uses many psychological services provided by the USOPC.
“I’ve started tracking my sleep,” she said, naming Clark as a counsellor. “Especially being an athlete who has multiple jobs, sleep is going to be your No. 1 saviour at all times. It’s the thing that – you know – helps mental clarity.”
