Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is now a major global health issue, affecting world population and high-performance athlete too. The aim of the present research was to analyze the effect of psychological profile, academic schedule, and gender in the perception of personal and professional threat of Olympic and Paralympic athletes facing the 2021 Tokyo Olympiad in the actual COVID-19 crisis. We analyzed in 136 Olympic (26.4 ± 6.2 years) and 39 Paralympic athletes (31.8 ± 9.3 years) academic and sport variables, individual perceptions about COVID-19 crisis, personality, loneliness, psychological inflexibility, and anxiety. Paralympic athletes perceived higher negative impact in their training and performance by the confinement than Olympic athletes (+24.18, p < 0.005, r = 0.60). Neuroticism and psychological inflexibility presented the greatest negative feelings for female athletes (+32.59, p < 0.000, r = 0.13) and the perception that quarantine would negatively affect their sports performance. Finally professional athletes showed lower values in personality tests (Agreeableness factor) about COVID-19 crisis than non-professionals (−40.62, p < 0.012, r = 0.88).
Highlights
The COVID-19 pandemic is a major global health issue, representing the most serious respiratory virus since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic (Casadevall and Pirofski, 2020)
The findings suggesting that the neuroticism was greater in female compared to male group (+32.59 points), which was justified by the U Mann–Whitney test [Z = 18.110, p < 0.000, effect size (r) = 0.13, small]
In the personality test results, differences appear in the athletes of professional training with respect to the other categories
Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic is a major global health issue, representing the most serious respiratory virus since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic (Casadevall and Pirofski, 2020). Threat Perception of Olympic Athletes defense mechanism that allow us to overcome different eliciting contextual scenarios, but some of these phylogenetic defense system could produce non adaptative behavior in current society and specially in exceptional situations (Clemente-Suárez et al, 2020). A recent review highlights the importance of providing effective a rapid information for people in quarantine (in addition to medical supplies) (Brooks et al, 2020). They suggested that the confinement period should be short, and the duration should not be changed unless in extreme circumstances (Brooks et al, 2020). In Spain, in response to COVID-19 pandemic, confinement has extended more than 6 weeks, and subject to changes
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