Two-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Manuel opened up about her experience with Overtraining Syndrome (OTS) during a documentary short produced by TOGETHXR, a new media company founded by Manuel, Alex Morgan, Sue Bird, and Chloe Kim.
The YouTube video’s release on Friday coincided with Manuel’s return to competition at the Pro Swim Series stop last weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee, her first high-level race since the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. OTS is a condition in which an athlete experiences fatigue and a declining performance in their sport despite continued or increased training.
Manuel first revealed her diagnosis with OTS after failing to advance to the final of the women’s 100 freestyle, the event in which she won 2016 Olympic gold and back-to-back World Championship titles in 2017 and 2019. In the new feature, the 26-year-old sprint specialist gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the lead-up to her diagnosis as she dealt with pressures from Olympic preparation, the COVID-19 pandemic and an expectation to be the voice of the Black community.
“My training was going pretty well until the pandemic hit,” Manuel said. “Pools got shut down fairly quickly just like everything else. What are we doing? What’s the solution? Are the Olympics happening? When is it going to happen?
“I think I had maybe two or three days off before we found that backyard pool, and I just continued to train,” she said. “I was then being asked to speak on these panels. How can we support our Black community? How can we diversify the sport of swimming?
“Being an athlete who was trying to focus on the Olympics, it was my job to work and continue to train. But also then be asked to continue to put my emotions on the line for other people to somehow be entertained by it. It was just a really tough time for me. Because I was training so hard and never took a break, I think my body just ended up crashing.”
In January of 2021, Manuel had at an intrasquad swim meet at Stanford, and she didn’t feel like herself. She told her coach that she wasn’t happy with her times. Looking back, she now says she regrets letting her coach dismiss her concerns.
“I kind of go to my coach and I’m like, ‘I don’t feel good about these performances,’” Manuel recalled. “And he’s like, ‘Oh, you’re doing fine. You’ll feel better soon.’ So I just kind of brush it off and continue to move on.
“I like to think of myself as someone who has a high swimming IQ, so I’m very aware of what’s going on with my body,” she added. “I just knew that things were off. My stroke wasn’t feeling the same. My rhythm was off. And I remember having conversations with my coach and asking him, ‘Well, how do you think I’m training?’ ‘Oh, you’re training really well. This is the best training I’ve ever seen you have.’ And I’m like, ‘But my times are slower.’ I wish I would have just told him, ‘No, I’m not going to come in.’”
By the time March of 2021 rolled around and she attended the Pro Swim Series in San Antonio, she couldn’t even compete in all of her events because her body couldn’t handle it.
“I was just sore,” Manuel said. “I couldn’t get my heart rate down. I wasn’t sleeping, and ended up going to the doctor, and the doctor tells me that I’m overtrained.”
Manuel says she kept training for a while after her initial diagnosis per coach’s instructions until her doctor decided she needed to take a three-week break or else she might not even make it to Olympic Trials.
“It really was just about damage control,” she said. “I continued to train for a while per my coach’s instructions and my progress continued to decline. My doctor decided that I needed to take a three-week break or I wasn’t even going to make it to Olympic Trials.”
After discussing her OTS diagnosis at Olympic Trials that summer, she then had to deal with those who didn’t believe her.
“People didn’t believe that I actually was overtrained,” Manuel said. “People said that I was distracted by all my other sponsor obligations, and that’s why I didn’t perform well. That I became lazy and my success went to my head. It’s really hard to be vulnerable in that space because it’s so easy for people to say they don’t believe me. I don’t get the empathy or understanding that I deserve.”
Manuel bounced back following a disappointing performance in the 100 free and qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in the 50 free. But she admitted that her second trip to the Olympics was not fun for her.
“I ended up winning that and making the team, but Tokyo was not fun — at all,” Manuel said. “I don’t think I would have declined my spot to go to the Olympics, but I didn’t expect it to be that hard. I just wasn’t prepared for what that would be like to go watch people in the 100 free, to not be on relays that I had been on for years. It’s really hard to step up on the starting blocks or the starting line and know that you’re not prepared at all. It’s like, ‘Why am I even here?’
“I hate admitting that, because I’m someone who, if I have a lane, I have a possibility of winning this because I’m so competitive,” she added. “But also it’s because I’m prepared.”
After placing 11th in the 50 free semifinals in Tokyo, Manuel was overwhelmed with disappointment. But now she’s taking the experience as a learning lesson headed into the next chapter of her swimming career.
“Anybody knows me knows that I am a fighter,” she said. “And to know that I had nothing left, it hurt me a lot.
“I don’t think enough competitive fire in me could have allowed me to make the final in the 50 free,” said Manuel, who still took home her fifth Olympic medal with a bronze in the women’s 4×100 free relay. “I distinctly remember going back to the team area, taking off my swimsuit, and just crying. If I was healthy, I was going and winning six medals. I only was going home with one? I was just really hurt by the whole experience.
“What I experienced with the Olympics and being overtrained was unfortunate, but definitely was a learning experience for me in multiple ways. Just how I want to protect my body physically, but also mentally.
“Reconnecting with the ones you love is extremely important. I think I’ve sacrificed a lot, but in order to continue to be happy in this sport, I want to spend more time with my family.
“Going into the next chapter of swimming would be trying to block out all the noise,” Manuel reflected. “I just want to swim with no pressure or expectations from anybody, even myself. Which I don’t know what that looks like, but I think that’s what’s next for me and that’s definitely going to be the focus: falling back in love with this sport and just being happy doing it. And then get back to competing on the highest level and hopefully winning some more medals.”
At last weekend’s Pro Swim Series, Manuel placed third in the 50 free (25.19) behind Olympic teammates Abbey Weitzeil (24.74) and Erika Brown (24.94) and ahead of another Olympian, Olivia Smoliga (25.33). Manuel has been training with Bob Bowman’s pro group at Arizona State since last August.
She has an individual event Olympic gold medal. Nothing more need be said. She will always be remembered for that greatness.
So many of the negative comments here are consistent with the unreasonable harshness– the racist microaggressions– that are consistently directed at Simone Manuel. It’s often sub-conscious. But some of us can see how she is treated very clearly.
RIP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x071o_S5vJM
Find an American replacement? I’ll wait
Me thinks that Dressel is going through exactly this. The stress, the weight on your shoulders, the expectations from others. A total mental mind f&^k.
Damn I miss watching that dude swim. Luckily, he could come back by 2024 and still win the 50 given that he’s relatively young for being a sprinter.
So when Katie was getting smoked by half the 200 field and getting walked downed by Titmus on multiple occasions in the 400, all I heard was it’s Greg’s fault, he changed her stroke, etc. She moves to UF and its celebrated.
Simone says she had a OTS problem brought on by stress, pandemic, not taking a break and the coach didn’t listen. She’s ungrateful, selfish, attention seeking, shifting blame, she wouldn’t be nothing without him, etc. This is the BS she has to deal with. Shocked she didn’t breakdown sooner
Ledecky didn’t blame anyone tho. She just changed program, started to thrive and never looked back. She never publicly blamed Meehan for her getting slower so I’m not sure dragging Ledecky into this is fair.
no one is ‘dragging ledecky’. this comment is simply pointing out the differences in public reaction from a white persons struggles to a POCs struggles. while both simone and katie were in similar situations, the blame and backlash was handled differently. a simple comment of comparison doesn’t mean harm or disrespect on the white person, it just points out their privilege.
Ledecky hasn’t done anything remotely like blame her coach in a YouTube video and that’s what’s caused this backlash right now so I don’t see the double standard in this instance.
Every National teamer should be required to see a mental health professional. Its absolutely essential and we can’t expect coaches to see the signs…or even have that type of relationship with the athletes. I hate that she felt she needed to bear that burden. She’s been nothing but class from day 1.
It is interesting how much a swimmer has to say in swimmer-coach relationships.
I remember same coach Meehan ask Katie Ledecky if she is in the mood to swim 4×100 final at NCAA after Ledecky had already a race in that session.
I think this video is so full of blame of her coaching at Stanford that it ends up being far from the touching story the background music seems to be looking to create.
She trained at Stanford for two years before her breakthrough glory in Rio and one of the most touching videos from those games was her embrace with Meehan and her Stanford teammates after her 100 win. With Simone and Maya DiRado’s performances at those Olympics, Meehan was among the brightest stars in the coaching world.
Now, she’s throwing those same coaches under the bus for overtraining, which is clearly rare among the superstars of the sport. I think the pressures of her being a role model,… Read more »
When all the pools in the Palo Alto area were closed in March of 2020, Manuel and Ledecky had the good fortune (privilege?) to train for a number of months in the home 25 yard pool of swimming hall of famer Tod Spieker.
Just a guess here, but perhaps the many Mano-a-Mano workouts with Katie [aka the workout vanquisher of the amazing True Sweetser] put her on the road to overtraining. Probably just one of many factors.
I hope Manuel is successful in her return to the sport, and I wish her *Good Times* over the next 18 months.
P.S. My favorite part of the video were her father Marc Manuel’s comments at the end.
I’m guessing Ledecky and Manuel don’t go “mano a mano” all that often in practice given their specialties.
They asked, she answered. The man can still be a good coach but make mistakes also.
Not really – this wasn’t an interview by the media, this video was a highly produced “film” for marketing purposes funded by Togethxr – the company Simone helped found along with a handful of other superstar female athletes. While it appears to be generating a lot of discussion and important attention on OTS, I don’t think the heavy amount of blame in the story paints Simone in the best light.
I didn’t come away from this thinking she put a heavy amount of blame on anyone.
I really don’t think castigating the coaches at Stanford was anywhere near the focus of the video.
This was also all in the video, and was more what I took away? It legitimately started with background of her as a kid, what it was like growing up swimming. Sort of framed it a bit more there for me, but hey, maybe you were looking for something else.
It’s a tough spot, right? I understand the pressures of her being a role model. It’s not something she asked for, it’s not something anybody should be obliged to do, part of the crime of institutionalized racism in this country is that black people have to be held to unreasonable standards as role models and educators.
But at the same time, what would her response be if nobody talked about it? You know her agents have leaned into the narrative because there’s money there. I won’t get into an argument about whether an athlete’s decisions about their images can or should be separated from their agent’s decisions about their image.
But I think maybe we all have to accept that… Read more »
(And now you all understand OTS. There was no way out of this cycle for Simone that led to a gold medal in Tokyo).