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Helping athletes boost wellbeing and performance

Filip Boen and Katrien Fransen look at how illness can be turned to wellness when ‘I’ becomes ‘we’, a social identity approach

Kamila Valieva

The experiences of three recent Olympic competitors provide dramatic illustrations of the importance of the mental/ psychological side of sport:

At the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo (held in 2021), the American gymnast Simone Biles — the most decorated gymnast of all time — made several mistakes. She was said to suffer from the ‘twisties’, a psychological phenomenon that causes gymnasts to lose their orientation while performing twisting routines in the air. After that, Biles chose to withdraw from the floor final and made a bold statement that her safety and mental health came first.

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