Olatz Rodríguez: "I didn't see myself capable of anything and I tried to escape by not eating"

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Olatz Rodríguez

, 1973,

.

A former gymnast, she retired from professional competition in 2002 after being hospitalized for anorexia.

In

(Planeta) she narrates the dark face of elite sport, made up of pressures and insecurities

When we see an athlete who breaks a record, a gymnast who manages to do exercises that seem impossible, are we aware of the dark side behind all that?

We all have our circumstances, and on many occasions these are precisely the ones that take us to the top.

But it would be unfair not to take into account other factors that, unfortunately, are not always shown but are part of that trajectory.

And we should not underestimate them, on the contrary, because both good news and bad news are necessary.

The good ones to enjoy and the bad ones, to learn from them and try not to repeat them.

When did you start doing gymnastics?

I started when I was seven years old.

I was very innocent, I was passionate about gymnastics and I remember those years as very happy.

I also remember that I was in my world, every so often the coaches had to tell me: "Olatz, we are here."

I have always been very introspective, and the coaches were surprised because perhaps they had never seen such a scattered girl. Did she dream of becoming a champion?

Well no, I did not dream of being a champion, far from it.

What's more: she dreamed of not competing anymore.

Didn't even at first long to reach the top of the podium? No, neither.

When I was little I trained because I liked it, in fact, when they told me that she was going to compete, my mother says that she made me unbearable, that she didn't want to, that she didn't want to.

She has been like this forever.

Did you feel that competing was a lot of pressure?

Yes. She didn't see any logic in the fact that they were measuring each other up.

It is true that perhaps at nine, ten years old he had not yet developed that critical thought, but he did have a notion of what justice was for me.

When, for example, it happened that I was on the podium, I felt bad.

I wasn't happy, not at all.

I didn't see any reward in competing, I saw the reward in training, having fun and enjoying myself.

When did things start to go wrong?

I would say that as I was losing my innocence and realizing what reality was.

It was a series of factors, which I suppose went hand in hand with maturity or something similar.

I began to want to improve in many aspects of my life, but at the same time I did not see myself capable,

didn't see me enough.

I observed that losing weight could be something positive, both from what I had seen in my sports and social spheres.

Normally, when you see someone and tell him that he has lost weight, that person is happy, and that is something that unconsciously influences us, we are creating that idea that losing weight may be a good thing.

I did not see myself capable of doing anything, I did not know how to manage that feeling, that discomfort, I was not capable of understanding reality.

And I tried to avoid all that by not eating. But being a gymnast you wouldn't have any problems with being overweight, would you?

No, on the contrary.

Since I was little, both I and my siblings have been in the lowest percentile, sometimes at risk.

At 8 years old, for example, I ate everything and the pediatrician told me that I had to eat more because otherwise I wouldn't be able to train.

No,

How old were you when you started to develop this idea that depriving yourself of food could be the solution to your problems?

Well, 14, 15 years.

And how was she getting into that well?

At first what I did was reduce those foods that I thought had too many calories.

Little by little I eliminated bread, carbohydrates, biscuits for breakfast... And after about six months, when I had no more foods of that type to restrict and I practically only ate vegetables, proteins and dairy products, I began to measure the calories of everything you ate.

I looked for all of them on the internet and I was measuring and calculating so that every day that number of calories would decrease.

In fact, I remember the menu he had. What was that menu?

For breakfast I had a vegetable yogurt, the one that I found with fewer calories, with a few flakes of oats.

At mid-morning, at school, I had a slice of turkey ham.

At lunch he used to have vegetables and half a steak.

In the afternoon I ate half a fruit, I did not dare to eat a whole piece.

And at night always, always a one-egg French omelette with a slice of York ham.

I imagine that in the meantime I was still training, doing gymnastics, which burned a lot of energy, right?

Yes of course.

Although then there came a point where the coaches didn't let me train anymore because they saw me very badly.

And how much time did you dedicate to training per day?

Our training sessions were from Monday to Sunday, approximately five and a half hours a day.

Do you think that the demands imposed by the sport could have had some relationship with your falling into anorexia?

At lunch he used to have vegetables and half a steak.

In the afternoon I ate half a fruit, I did not dare to eat a whole piece.

And at night always, always a one-egg French omelette with a slice of York ham.

I imagine that in the meantime I was still training, doing gymnastics, which burned a lot of energy, right?

Yes of course.

Although then there came a point where the coaches didn't let me train anymore because they saw me very badly.

And how much time did you dedicate to training per day?

Our training sessions were from Monday to Sunday, approximately five and a half hours a day.

Do you think that the demands imposed by the sport could have had some relationship with your falling into anorexia?

At lunch he used to have vegetables and half a steak.

In the afternoon I ate half a fruit, I did not dare to eat a whole piece.

And at night always, always a one-egg French omelette with a slice of York ham.

I imagine that in the meantime I was still training, doing gymnastics, which burned a lot of energy, right?

Yes of course.

Although then there came a point where the coaches didn't let me train anymore because they saw me very badly.

And how much time did you dedicate to training per day?

Our training sessions were from Monday to Sunday, approximately five and a half hours a day.

Do you think that the demands imposed by the sport could have had some relationship with your falling into anorexia?

always a one-egg French omelette with a slice of york ham.

I imagine that in the meantime she kept training, doing gymnastics, with which she burned a lot of energy, right?

Yes of course.

Although then there came a point where the coaches didn't let me train anymore because they saw me very badly.

And how much time did you dedicate to training per day?

Our training sessions were from Monday to Sunday, approximately five and a half hours a day.

Do you think that the demands imposed by the sport could have had some relationship with your falling into anorexia?

always a one-egg French omelette with a slice of york ham.

I imagine that in the meantime she kept training, doing gymnastics, with which she burned a lot of energy, right?

Yes of course.

Although then there came a point where the coaches didn't let me train anymore because they saw me very badly.

And how much time did you dedicate to training per day?

Our training sessions were from Monday to Sunday, approximately five and a half hours a day.

Do you think that the demands imposed by the sport could have had some relationship with your falling into anorexia?

And how much time did you dedicate to training per day?

Our training sessions were from Monday to Sunday, approximately five and a half hours a day.

Do you think that the demands imposed by the sport could have had some relationship with your falling into anorexia?

And how much time did you dedicate to training per day?

Our training sessions were from Monday to Sunday, approximately five and a half hours a day.

Do you think that the demands imposed by the sport could have had some relationship with your falling into anorexia?

I think so, that it could have had an influence.

In the end, it is an environment in which the person tends to seek perfection.

I know that perfection does not exist and that perfection understood as constant improvement is not something negative.

But when a person does not know how to measure the means that he uses to achieve that continuous improvement, there is a danger.

I don't want to give the message that elite sport is horrible, but there are people who perhaps should have more psychological tools when practicing it.

And maybe also the teammates and coaches themselves should inform us that there is a possibility that some people have such a bad time. But your training, didn't it include psychological training?

Yes always.

Since I was relatively small I did it, because my nerve management was never good.

And did that psychological training help you?

In a way yes, but he never really helped me.

And when I was restricting food I didn't tell the psychologist either, he didn't know.

I don't know to what extent the trust that I had developed with that professional was the maximum to help me. When did he realize that he had a problem?

My mother had already warned me.

I started to stop eating at the beginning of the summer of 2018, and at the end of the summer my mother was already worried, she told me: "Girl you have to eat more, please".

My grandmother also noticed something strange about me.

At the end of 2018 I reached a very dangerous weight nutritionally, and it was at that point that the trainers also began to worry a lot.

I already knew that something was not right,

because there were times when I wanted to eat foods that I had irrationally forbidden myself.

There were days when I wanted to eat a cocoa cream sandwich, like the one I often prepared for my sister for an afternoon snack.

He was happy when he saw it eating and thought: "I wish I could eat it too".

And why didn't he?

I did not dare.

Once I did it and I felt so bad that afterwards I didn't eat, I barely had dinner.

When I did, the restriction and discomfort increased, and it did not compensate me to suffer so much and have to restrict twice as much for having eaten a food that scared me.

That's when I realized something wasn't right.

I went into Google and did a survey, which I don't know to what extent is a good method to self-diagnose.

But he guided me and I realized that I was not wrong,

that indeed it was very likely that he had a problem with feeding.

In that survey on anorexia, in fact, it came out: "Go to your doctor"... That's right, which I see as very correct.

I told my mother, we went to doctors.

And finally, when they saw that we couldn't handle the situation, that I was getting dizzy, that I couldn't go to class, at the beginning of January 2019 they took me to the hospital and I was admitted to the endocrinology ward. At what point did you stop training?

At the end of December 2018 he was no longer training.

I sat on a bench because my trainers wouldn't let me train.

When Simone Biles, the most successful gymnast of all time, announced at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics that she was withdrawing from it due to mental health problems, did you identify with her in any way?

It was incredible.

I felt a lot

a lot of admiration for her, but I can't compare myself to a figure as huge as hers.

But did she identify with the pain and insecurities that elite sport can generate?

Yes. I think that almost all athletes who have experienced high-level sport could feel identified.

Are you sorry you had to quit gymnastics?

Yes. Today I am still passionate about rhythmic music.

I still don't like competition, but I miss training a lot.

I was very happy training and I miss that very, very much.

What did she do with her life when she left the hospital?

After leaving the hospital I spent a few months of exhaustive recovery.

Later they allowed me to start training, despite the fact that at first I was forbidden to do so.

And in 2020 I decided to retire.

From then until now, well,

there has been a pandemic in between.

And I'd be lying if I said I'm fine.

At the end of 2020 I was diagnosed with depression and little by little I am finding something better.

The important thing in the face of a mental illness is to seek help, not to feel weak or inferior for having a mental health illness.

And as for the personal, I am now living in Madrid, where I am studying medicine, and I think that is what is helping me to get out of my routine of thoughts a bit.

I am loving Medicine, I feel very lucky to be able to study something that I like, although I also have the thorn of Philosophy there. What advice would you give to girls who enter elite gymnastics?

That they feel safe, in the sense that they really want to embark on that path.

It is a very nice path as long as you like competition and know how to manage your emotions.

And that they seek psychological help, because it is just as important as all the hours of training.

Let them think that it is about enjoying themselves, that there should be no room for comparisons, that nobody is better than anyone else.

And let them eat, let them be nourished.

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