Psychological preparation of the 2004 South African Olympic team

C Gahwiler

doi:10.17159/2078-516x/2007/v19i3a642

Abstract

Background. The 2004 Athens Olympics represented the greatest opportunity for psychological preparation yet afforded a multicode South African team. A coordinating psychologist was appointed a year before the event, with access to financial and other resources. Aim. The purposes of this paper are fourfold: (i) to describe a 5-stage model used for the psychological preparation of the 2004 South African Olympic team; (ii) to report on the athletes and their management teams’ perceptions of its efficacy; (iii) to describe the perceived positive and negative determinants of these same subjects’ state of mind at the Olympics; and (iv) to make recommendations for the existing model’s further improvement. Results. The psychological preparation was well received, with almost all athletes and coaches requesting an expansion thereof in the future. Recommendations are made for the model’s improvement, particularly for its ongoing implementation throughout the 4-year Olympic cycle

Highlights

Since the early 1980s it has become increasingly common to have psychologists forming a part of the various countries’ medical teams to the Olympic Games
In his report he implies this to be a relatively low number of interventions, and cites the lack of opportunities to establish rapport between psychologist and athletes as the main reason. Both Gahwiler and Nel found that coaches and athletes they had met with prior to the All-Africa Games were more likely to use their services during the actual event than athletes they had not consulted with before. This is consistent with the experiences of non-South African psychologists, e.g. Bond in Australia[1] and McCann in the USA.[2]
The structured psychological preparation programme began a year before the 2004 Athens Olympics, with the appointment of a coordinating psychologist by the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (NOCSA)

Summary

Introduction

Since the early 1980s it has become increasingly common to have psychologists forming a part of the various countries’ medical teams to the Olympic Games. Correspondence: Potgieter reported having 21 formal individual consultations and 3 team consultations at the Olympic Games in Sydney 2000 (unpublished manuscript, 2000) In his report he implies this to be a relatively low number of interventions, and cites the lack of opportunities (preOlympics) to establish rapport between psychologist and athletes as the main reason. Both Gahwiler (unpublished manuscript, 1999) and Nel (unpublished manuscript, 2003) found that coaches and athletes they had met with prior to the All-Africa Games were more likely to use their services during the actual event than athletes they had not consulted with before. A coordinating psychologist was appointed a year before the event, with access to financial and other resources

Methods

Results

Conclusion