Athletes head home in triumph and in tears

It's almost over. After years of preparation, athletes are heading home from the Beijing Olympics to resume jobs, studies, training, and a handful to cash in on new-found fame -- and many will struggle to adjust.

Reality can be a far cry from the dazzling opening ceremony on Aug. 8 when 10,500 athletes were hailed as the world's sporting elite, from competing in spectacular venues in and around Beijing and from living with the support network of thousands of their peers.

Post-Olympic blues, identity crises and eating disorders are all common after an Olympics, according to sports psychologists who have been playing a greater role in the leadup to the Games and also afterwards, with many nations offering counselling.

Danielle de Bruijn, 30, whose seven goals secured a gold medal for the Dutch women's water polo team, said heading home could be difficult, especially for athletes who had not done as well as expected and were retiring.

"We came fourth in Sydney 2000 and 11 of the 13 players quit after the Games and went into a black hole," Bruijn told Reuters.

"I'm retiring after Beijing but I've got gold so I have achieved what I wanted. I'm having a holiday then to work as a financial administrator. I'll be busy and I think I'll be fine."

She said the Dutch team organisers, like many national Olympic committees, ensured counselling was available for athletes if they had trouble with the let-down.

Like many athletes, Bruijn quit work 18 months before Beijing to focus on training but she had a plan in place for afterwards unlike German triathlon gold medallist Jan Frodeno.

"My life's plan ended about an hour ago," he said after his race. "This was the dream of my life. I've always lived by the motto 'plan A has got to work'. I didn't have a plan B and I don't know what's next."

Peter Clarke, a psychologist for the British women's curling team at the winter Olympics in 2002 and 2006, said even athletes who went home with gold medals could struggle.

"Gold medal winners have been known to suffer from such things as sudden lack of identity," Clarke told Reuters.

"Having to deal with the stresses and strains of arduous training for so many years together with the total disruption of 'normal' social activities can be very difficult to handle."

British cyclist Bradley Wiggins, who won two gold medals in Beijing, was positively muted on the podium this time around compared with the raw emotions he showed after winning in Athens.

"I don't do emotion any more," he said. "Athens nearly destroyed me... I was a mature athlete but an immature person."

He said he was so overwhelmed by his gold from Athens that he didn't concentrate on subsequent team races, went out drinking and didn't bother to get enough sleep.

"I didn't give a monkey's," he said. "When I got home I took months off the bike and ... well, you will just have to read all about it in the book!"

Jenny Susser, a clinical health psychologist specialising in sport at New York's Hospital for Special Surgery, said the mental pressure on athletes was more widely recognised and sport psychology played a bigger role at each Olympics.

"Awareness of the emotions will help and getting the athletes to talk can be an easy way to help them out," she told Reuters.

The International Olympic Committee recognised this during the Beijing Games and launched a programme to help athletes.

The programme, designed in collaboration with Swiss staffing group Adecco, aims to provide guidance and tools to help them to manage training, competition and the challenges and opportunities of day-to-day life.

But for some the disappointment of years of training and so many sacrifices to miss out on a medal was too much.

Brazilian beach volleyball player Ana Paula Connelly, 36, moved her seven-year-old son in with her sister a year ago while she trained. She was eliminated in the quarter-finals.

She was uncertain whether she would continue to compete.

"This whole feeling is too much," she said. "I leave without a medal, but I leave with all these new feelings as a new person."