The Olympics, which are held every four years, aren't always restricted to skill, talent, or strength. At the elite level, the difference between glory and heartbreak can be invisible, and the line, often blurred. Medals are won or lost by the barest of margins, and yet what happens in an athlete's mind is often ignored and perhaps least spoken about. The mind wins, even before the outcome, given the fact that the Olympic race is not always for the swift. The battle, before, during, and after the event, is not always reserved for the strong.

For mental wellness expert Divya Jain, who worked closely with Team India during the Paris Olympics, the biggest misconception is that pressure is something athletes are simply born to handle. And it cannot be further from reality, as we are not just dealing with athletes here but also with a person whose identity may go far beyond sports.

"I don't think any of us can understand what it's actually like for athletes to experience. Players are training for 10 years, 15 years, for that one moment. Before and after, there is no conversation about sports. So the pressure is tremendous. What's important is that we train ourselves to deal with that pressure. It's actually about the mental skills players need. So just like you have technical skills, just like you work on your physical strength, your fitness. So the mental aspect is also something that has to be built up in terms of how players learn to deal with the pressure at that time," she told Sports Now in an exclusive interview.

In high-pressure moments, the body reacts — muscles tighten, focus shifts from process to result, and even the smallest distraction can alter performance. At that level, a fraction of a second or a minor lapse can decide everything.

"It's natural to feel that pressure; it's normal to feel that adrenaline rush. But because of that, even physiologically, you can experience some changes, you know, your muscles can tighten up a little bit, you can tend to be a little more distractible as well. So there are changes that can happen at the thought level, at the emotional level, at the physiological level, all of which tend to impact our performance in small, subtle ways," she explained.

"But when it comes to performance at that level, even a split second of a difference can mean so much. So it's about giving players the skills to be able to deal with that pressure, to learn how to play under that kind of pressure, to harness that pressure actually to be able to perform even better than they would normally be able to," she added.

But this isn’t just theory. It’s something Mirabai Chanu and her long-time coach Vijay Sharma have lived through. Chanu was one of India's medal prospects leading into the Rio Olympics. She had entered the Rio Olympics on the back of a national-record performance, but as fate had it, she could not complete any of her clean-and-jerk lifts, leaving her to contemplate early retirement.

"I have been working with Mira since 2014. At theRio Olympics, we found out that we are physically very strong, but mentally unprepared. And to be honest, at that point, we were not aware of how important the mental aspect can be. And then we started working on mental training, and it has benefited us a lot," Vijay told Sports Now.

What makes this journey even more complex is the constant interplay between coach, athlete, and psychologist. Emphasing the need to have a sports psychologist in today's world, Vijay highlighted, "There have been occasions where I have suggested a certain technical adjustment to Mira, and perhaps she took it differently. She was tentative to accept it. That's when we seek help from sports psychologists. In life, sometimes you come with a pre-conceived notion that some things are right and some are not. The idea is always to work together and then find a solution."

Mirabai Chanu returned in emphatic fashion at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, winning silver, the second Olympic medal by an Indian weightlifter after Karnam Malleswari. Chanu did. Countless others could not.

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