Professional sporting careers don’t last long. Sportsmen and women dedicate their formative years to training, training, training, have a few years in the limelight and then… exactly! Then what? The transition from elite athlete to retiree can be demoralising and tough – so much so that Oxford Brookes University has set up a programme to help former athletes through the difficult times they often experience as their careers come to an end.
Thankfully, the world has changed since the retirement of one of the world’s most famous gold medallists, Jesse Owens. Owens was a thorn in Hitler’s side: the black athlete who defeated the Nazis’ Aryan super-men. However, when he returned home to the segregated US, Owens wasn’t even allowed to sit at the front of a bus. After being forced out of athletics, he drifted from job to job and eventually filed for bankruptcy. He wasn’t officially recognised by his country for four decades after the 1936 Olympics.
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