Sam Oldham on retirement plans and mental health struggles
Saturday 22 February 2020 18:56, UK
British gymnast Sam Oldham has opened up about his battles with depression and revealed his plans for retiring in the summer.
The 27-year-old, who won a stunning team bronze at the London Olympics in 2012, was supported by Sky as a Sports Scholar from 2013 to 2017.
Oldham, along with Louis Smith, Max Whitlock, Kristian Thomas and Daniel Purvis, won Great Britain's first ever gymnastics Olympic team medal.
It was a huge achievement for the gymnast from Nottingham, who was also signed by Notts County FC at the age of 12 in the same year he made his debut for the British gymnastics team.
However, despite the team euphoria in London eight years ago, his fall from the high bar is an emotional memory as he starts to reflect on stepping away from the sport.
"It was my best event, the one I was there to compete for," said Oldham. "I was last to compete on the parallel bars and I got our best score, but we flipped straight to high bars and I had to run to get my hand guards on.
"I was panicking and I split my thumb open, and there was blood all over my hand guards. I was trying to keep calm but I was 19 - there were 20,000 people watching, my family in the audience. I couldn't see my coach.
"So I fell. My fingertips caught it but I fell. I finished my routine and finished it well. I got 14, which is still a really good score on the high bar.
"But my life just crashed in an instant. I couldn't help thinking I'd just cost my country a first Olympic medal in 100 years and we might never get the opportunity again.
"For the two years after that I beat myself up and when I saw the medal I really struggled with it, because all the people around me were on cloud nine and I felt awful, like I didn't deserve my medal, and I felt a lot of pain about it."
Oldham remains hopeful of making the Tokyo Games. It would be a sweet turnaround, having missed out on selection for Rio 2016 following a serious ankle injury at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow two years earlier.
Those disappointments, plus losing his place in the Team GB squad last year, left Oldham fearing for his mental health and eventually seeking therapy.
"There were a lot of things that led up to that moment. Sport can be incredibly tough and from a very young age I set the benchmark incredibly high," he added.
"It wasn't really until last year, when I got taken off the GB squad and I had to move back in with my grandparents. I wasn't getting any money and I'd been doing this for 20 years so my self-worth was incredibly low.
"Luckily I had the self-awareness to ask for help. Now I'm in an incredible place. I know now I don't want to take that risk with my mental health and go down that dark path again.
"Now as I come to the end of my career, my biggest target is to have a positive experience this summer."
