“Your worth just isn’t based mostly in your results_ – Olympic Champion Jenny Rissveds on balancing highway, mountain, and psychological well being
Swedish rider Jenny Rissveds, one of the crucial recognizable athletes in biking, has swapped her mountain bike for a highway bike and is at present main a younger Group Coop-Hitec Product among the many world-class peloton competing on the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
The 2016 Olympic Champion within the cross nation mountain biking occasion goals to hold her finest type into the first-ever mixed Glasgow World Championships, the place she wish to compete within the elite ladies’s cross nation on August 12 at Glentress Forest and highway race on August 13 in Glasgow. The 29-year-old’s double-disciple objectives proceed past Worlds as she makes an attempt to qualify for each mountain bike and highway occasions on the Paris Olympics subsequent summer time.
“What evokes me with highway racing is that you simply work as a workforce and towards a standard aim, and I feel that is very inspiring and motivating,” Rissveds mentioned in an interview in Clermont-Ferrand at Tour de France Femmes.
“It is good coaching for mountain biking, and extra individuals may benefit from doing extra disciplines. It is a good and enjoyable expertise and good coaching.”
Strain
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Jenny Rissveds atop the Olympic podium in 2016
Seven years in the past, at 22 years outdated, Rissveds reached what many take into account the peak of athletic achievement as she raced throughout the end line with a commanding result in seize the gold medal on the 2016 Olympic Video games in Rio de Janeiro.
Using into the Deodoro Pentathlon Park unchallenged after a battle for the gold towards Poland’s Maja Wloszczowska, Rissveds’ efficiency was a show of energy, power and management for the 1:30 it took to her to experience away with the game’s high prize.
Following that exceptional efficiency, Rissveds’ day-to-day life shortly grew to become public, thrust into the limelight because the sporting world – media and followers – celebrated her success. On the within, nonetheless, her private life started to indicate indicators of pressure underneath the pressures of being a recognizable determine. Considering again on that point, she felt she wasn’t given the instruments to deal with how her life would change after successful the Olympics.
A disagreement with the Swedish Biking Federation and stress from the media, mixed with two losses in her household, she struggled with despair and an consuming dysfunction; inside a yr of successful the Olympic gold medal, the fastest-rising expertise in biking left the game.
“I had psychological well being issues. It was the whole lot. I received the Olympics in Rio, and after that, I feel stress from outdoors and media and from myself acquired to be an excessive amount of. I used to be younger, solely 22, after I received the Olympics, and did not have the expertise of the right way to deal with it,” Rissveds mentioned.
“You hear since you’re a child that the most important factor to win is the Olympics. You will have this massive dream, and also you construct up an image of how it may be, and you then win it, and nothing modifications. You might be all the time going to be the identical particular person. Nothing modifications simply since you turn out to be the Olympic Champion.
“It was a shock for me. On the one hand, the whole lot modified; everybody needed to be a part of my life. Then again, nothing modified, and I used to be simply the identical particular person. Folks checked out me in another way, and that was arduous for me.”
“I give attention to having fun with day-after-day”
Rissveds revealed that her despair reached its lowest level when she could not get off the bed. “I did not need to be alive,” she seemed again on her two-year hiatus from sport after successful the Lenzerheide World Cup in 2019.
Searching for therapy to handle her psychological well being was important to Rissveds’ restoration. She additionally mentioned that in her time away from racing, she rode her bike for enjoyable, and based mostly her driving solely on feeling – it was important for her to take time to get better and luxuriate in life once more.
“I went out within the forest and had good walks; someday, I felt like I needed to experience my bike once more, so I began to experience. After that, I began coaching, and it was a course of to come back again,” Rissveds mentioned.
“I have been in remedy lots, which helped me lots, and I attempted to focus extra on the entire efficiency and the journey. I solely used to give attention to the massive aim; Worlds, Olympics, and that was the whole lot.
“I discovered to give attention to having fun with day-after-day and the method slightly than attaining massive objectives, which is the important thing, I’d say.”
When Rissveds reconnected with racing in 2019, she had trustworthy conversations about her wrestle with an consuming dysfunction that she mentioned and an affect on her well-being and profession. “I do not know what got here first, the despair or the consuming dysfunction. It is like in the event you cease consuming, your mind will not work usually. Then all of the stress that got here out of successful the mountain bike races and successful the Olympics, and all that blended collectively – it was simply an excessive amount of,” she mentioned in a RedBull video interview sequence.
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Jenny Rissveds within the peloton on the 2023 Tour de France Femmes
Whereas on the Tour de France Femmes, Rissveds mentioned she felt that disordered consuming was a major drawback in sports activities and all over the place. She hopes it turns into a subject of debate amongst younger athletes coming into the game to assist defend their bodily and psychological well-being.
It is vital that we discuss these points. It is an issue; it is all over the place, not solely in sports activities. I feel you should not evaluate an excessive amount of to others. Your physique is working completely superb, and that’s sufficient,” Rissveds mentioned.
“As a teenager, you shouldn’t take into consideration consuming much less. You must eat till you are full, and if you’re hungry, you eat once more. Eat the whole lot. It does not should be black and white; it may be some days. You will have this; one other day, you’ve one thing else.”
“Racing with a brand new mindset”
Rissveds made a exceptional comeback with a victory on the MTB World Cup in Lenzerheide in 2019. She then slowly rebuilt her biking profession on what she feels is a extra strong and more healthy basis.
Since her return to racing 5 years in the past, she has received 5 World Cups and has amassed 13 podiums. She started racing on the highway final yr and competed in a handful of races, comparable to Gracia Orlova, and have become the Swedish Champion.
She is now competing in a number of highway races Group Coop-Hitec Product, having signed with the Norwegian Continental workforce in June.
She mentioned she should keep grounded, even when competing in a race as massive because the Tour de France Femmes. At the beginning and end of every stage, she creates her personal private area, acknowledging that the fanfare and media surrounding the Tour de France can appear daunting. She hardly ever takes interviews with the press except organized by way of her agent and solely joins the blended zone on the end line, a aware choice to assist defend her psychological well being. Having enjoyable on the race is the first aim.
“Now I’ve extra expertise, and I am older, wiser,” Rissveds mentioned.
“I am having fun with bike racing much more now when I’ve that type of mindset and when I attempt to have enjoyable and never take myself too critically. It is extra vital than the outcomes. In the long run, it’s a must to reside with your self, and in the event you’re not completely satisfied, will probably be a tough life.
“Some days are going to be robust, after all, and it’s a must to enable your self to really feel the arduous feelings and the tough occasions, too. Everybody goes by way of it. Usually, it’s a must to get pleasure from what you might be doing, after which you can be wholesome and good, more often than not.
“What can be vital to grasp is that we will nonetheless win races on the highest stage on the planet with a very totally different mindset and by simply having enjoyable on our bikes. After all, I do my coaching, and it is arduous, however generally, I am having enjoyable and having fun with life, and that brings me to the very same stage as earlier than after I solely targeted on massive objectives.”
On the Tour de France Femmes, Rissveds leads a seven-rider workforce that features Stine Dale, India Grangier, Sigrid Ytterhus Haugset, Tiril Jorgensen, Lucie Jounier and Josie Nelson.
Group supervisor Tone Lima mentioned that Rissveds had benefited the workforce by making a no-stress surroundings for the youthful riders. Lima mentioned she brings calmness and expertise to the workforce and acts as a task mannequin.
“We are able to see that she has the expertise as a result of she has executed massive races earlier than, even when it wasn’t on the highway. She is aware of a race is a race. She calms down the riders on our workforce who’re very younger. The Tour de France is an enormous race for them. We are able to see that they’re nervous, however she explains to them that it’s nonetheless only a biking race. It is good to have her, even when she just isn’t as skilled on the highway; she is skilled in her life,” Lima mentioned.
“We are able to see that she needs them to not make the Tour de France larger than it’s. When you’re on the beginning line, it’s nonetheless only a race, the identical as all of the others. It is simply that the whole lot across the race, earlier than and after, is greater. We attempt to enter the bubble and benefit from the moments.”
“We’re all the identical, all people”
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Rissveds at present races underneath the Group 31-IBIS-Cycles Continental workforce in mountain biking, ranked seventh general within the World Cup standings after 4 rounds, and might be one of many favourites on the Glasgow World Championships.
She shaped Group 31 upon her return to competitors in 2019. The workforce’s title is a nod to the United Nations’ Article 31: The Conference on the Rights of the Youngster.
It features a kid’s proper to relaxation, leisure, to interact in play and leisure actions acceptable to the age of the kid and to take part freely in cultural life and the humanities.
The article additionally states that events should respect and promote the correct of the kid to take part totally in cultural and creative life and shall encourage the availability of acceptable and equal alternatives for cultural, creative, leisure and leisure exercise.
“We’re engaged on it, not essentially to develop larger, however to activate extra youngsters, and we organize actions for teenagers on the World Cups. We experience with them and hang around with them. I feel it is crucial,” Rissveds mentioned.
“Once I received the Olympics, individuals have been trying upto me, which is sweet, but it surely additionally creates a spot between followers and the skilled athlete. It is vital that we attempt to shut that hole and present that everybody is similar on the within, we’re all the identical, all people, and I like to indicate the children that. I prefer to combine with the children and hang around with them to indicate them that we’re on the identical stage and might hang around as associates, simply as anybody else. There is no such thing as a distinction between us simply because I received a motorcycle race. That is not vital.”
Rissveds has ridden the primary three levels of the Tour de France Femmes, and between her highway racing and mountain bike endeavours, she is spreading consciousness to the general public, athletes and kids of the significance of feeling valued as an individual, not for one’s success in sport, however for merely being.
“It is vital to speak about all sides of sports activities and biking. Each have good occasions and unhealthy occasions. We additionally want to speak concerning the course of extra, and never solely these massive moments,” Rissveds mentioned. “After all, it is rather good to take action, however not everybody can do it. You are still value as a lot because the one who wins, and your worth just isn’t based mostly in your outcomes.”
