New York, September 3, 2012, US Open quarter-finals. An Arthur Ashe Stadium full of spectators awaits the entry into the field of world number one, Roger Federer, and Mardy Fish, number eight in the global ranking and best of American tennis players.
The Swiss is in the corridor that precedes the field and awaits Fish, who is late in arriving. For the American, it is the most important match in his life, the one he has worked hard for since he started playing tennis at the age of five. The wait goes on, the minutes pass, the tension rises. “Where is Mardy?” Everyone asks. Fish is in the locker room, he doesn't want to play, he gives up. The stress, anxiety, and panic attacks that have plagued him for years have overwhelmed him.
He leaves tennis and decides to seek treatment and then decides to tell about himself. He had never been allowed to show weaknesses, the big names in sport are not allowed, now he feels free to do so.
Fish was among the first, in the age of modern sport, of exasperated competition and big gains, to do so and pave the way for others. He also told about it in a Netflix series - Untold - that everyone should watch to understand how a champion is built, how much effort he makes, what expectations he has to meet.
Fish broke a taboo, got out of his prison and freed other athletes.
What a mental cage is was explained recently by the events of Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka, even before Federica Pellegrini had exposed herself.
When the 24-year-old American gymnast arrived in Tokyo there was no discussion about her victory but about how many gold medals she would take home. After all, she is the strongest of all time, she has already won four golds and a bronze in Rio de Janeiro and 25 times she has been on the top step of the podium at the world championships. She qualified for all the finals in Japan, the first woman to do so since the 1992 Olympics. The whole world is watching her. But after the first vaulting competition she withdraws from the final. “I have to think about my mental health,” he explains. Then he also deserted the parallel race. She explains why in an Instagram story: there's a video of her trying to exit at the asymmetrical parallels but falls on her back. He says he is unable to perform the twists because while he is in the air he loses control and no longer understands where he is and, therefore, risks landing incorrectly and getting very injured. “I can't compete, I have a mental block,” he reveals. In the following days he also retires from the final of the free body, in which, according to expectations, he would have to perform an exercise that no one had ever done before. Instead, he participates in the final of the beam and wins a bronze. After the races, he explained in an interview: “It was not easy for me to withdraw from those races, but physically and mentally I was not in the right condition and I didn't want to put my health at risk. Not worth it. My physical and mental health are more important than the medals I could win ”.
Naomi Osaka is the same age as Simone, although she has to be 24 in October. Since entering the circuit she has surprised everyone: she is the only one, together with Roger Federer and Monica Seles, to have won all the first four Grand Slam finals played, a result that has led her to make the history of her country. In 2019, after winning the Australian open, she becomes number one in the world and ends the year with 37.4 million dollars in her current account. For Forbes she is the richest sportswoman in the world. His life changes, he enters the vortex of sponsors, of photo sets. But a smile rarely appears on his face. On the contrary.
Again this year he wins in Melbourne but then begins to die out, tournament after tournament. After a defeat at Roland Garros he misses the meeting with journalists because he is unable to stand up to aggressive questions and is afraid - he will later explain - to confess his depression. For this he is fined: players are not allowed to desert press conferences. A few months later at the Cincinnati Masters, after a question judged too aggressive by the Enquirer correspondent, he bursts into tears and leaves. He arrives at the US Open and loses in the third round against world number 73, 18-year-old Leylah Fernandez, who will then play the strangest final in history against number 125 in the ranking, Emma Raducanu, who will win the title. Osaka introduces herself to the journalists with her sad and distraught gaze, lowers the visor of her hat and with a faint voice describes her state of mind: "I told myself to be calm but I feel that maybe there was a point of boiling. Normally I like challenges. But recently I have been feeling very anxious when things don't go my way. When I win I don't feel happy. I am mostly relieved. But then when I lose I feel very sad, I don't think it's normal. Basically I feel like I'm still trying to figure out what to do and I honestly don't know when I'm going to play my next tennis match, I think I'll take a break from playing for a while. " The way she talks about her illness, with a tear running down her face live in front of millions of people, conveys her anguish in a very clear way, tells her drama: one can be praised - and she in Japan is considered a goddess - you can be famous and rich, sometimes the best of all. But one can be deeply unhappy.