“Athletes showing their emotions put themselves at greater risk than men.” At the Paris Olympics, these athletes who allow themselves to break.

“I missed it completely, I wasn’t there, I was absent, I wasn’t strong for my team. It’s hard.” Her voice shaking, her eyes still swollen with tears, French gymnastics captain Melanie de Jesus dos Santos was emotional on July 28 as she answered questions from France Télévisions after Les Bleues’ surprise loss. Paris Olympics .

The heartbreaking sequence went viral on the internet at full speed. Like others, marked by emotional outbursts of athletes. Mingling together, we saw tears of joy flow from French fencer Manon Apity-Brunette, Olympic fencing champion; Jeanne Lehey, a triathlete from Luxembourg, fell on the side of the track after falling on her bicycle, sobbing in shock. French table tennis player Alexis Lebrun sobs after his elimination in the round of 16. heard Japanese judoka Uta Abe’s cry of pain as she walked through the Arena Champs-de-Mars after her surprise defeat to Uzbekistan’s Diyora Keldiyorova on July 28; or, in a moment of great elegance, the defeated Italian judoka Odetta Giuffrida consoles her Brazilian rival Larissa Pimenta, paralyzed with emotion.

Emotions as standard

If their emotions, tears or crying are spontaneous, some athletes choose to share them as a way to claim their mistakes and the right to break down. Moroccan surfer Ramzi Bouchiam, who was eliminated in the 3rd round, published a selfie video on Instagram. “I’m a little sad,” she admits, her eyes still red from tears. Turkish fencer Nisanur Erbil answered the questions of TRT TV channel immediately after her defeat against French Sarah Balzer in the 1/8 finals. “First of all, I’m sorry if I can’t control my emotions,” he says in front of the camera. A few hours later, he published his interview on Instagram. “I want to share this video so that I don’t forget where I came from and remember that better days are coming,” he wrote in the caption of the post.

It may not seem like much, but these tear-jerking stunts tear through the marketing veil that usually separates the public from the athletes. Accustomed to looks and cameras, control and staging specialists, they know how to play with their technique or muscle, building a story where endurance competes with strength. And leave a kind of superhuman aura… That this latest wave of emotions carried among women, but also among men.

“We’re talking about something that starts in the 2000s or 2010s,” assures sports historian Floris Castanet-Vicente, a professor at the University of Paris. The way athletes express their emotions is evolving, but so is the way we perceive them. Some voices suggest that we are moved to tears by a judo player, but not by a tennis player smashing his racket. We are witnessing a kind of rebalancing.”

Their emotions and feelings were mobilized against the athletes to show that they were unable to hold their nerve;

Floris Castan-Vicente, historian

Sexism Olympiad.

A progressive movement as Olympism has come a long way. Long absent from the Games, women found themselves bombarded with sexist stereotypes when they entered the competition. “Their emotions and feelings have been mobilized against them to show that they are unable to hold their nerve,” continues Floris Casta-Vicente. The clearest example remains the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. For the first time, runners lined up at the start of the 800-meter race, long considered too long for them. Germany’s Lina Radke, the leader, surges ahead and breaks her own record, while her rivals give it their all to close the gap. Upon arrival, what we will describe today as fake news spreading at full speed. “I found references to it as far as Australia or Canada. all say runners collapsed, victims of hysteria attacks. However, historians have discovered a film of the race that proves it to be fake. Some just sat down to catch their breath.” This has not stopped international sports bodies from banning the women’s 800m from the Olympic calendar for decades. In the name of the good of women.

And in 2024 “For high-level female athletes, showing your emotions always means putting yourself at greater risk than men. They tend to wear a matching smile for a long time, as if mandatory. Back in the 1920s, tennis player Susan Lenglen took time out after a grueling match to pose for a photo, smiling as if to show that all was well. This commitment to remain feminine, beautiful and lovable, directed towards heterosexual male desires, persists today. It’s even more pronounced in the all-female Olympic sports of synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics, where athletes must have makeup, hair and smiles on from start to finish.

These athletes who explode the taboo

However, some athletes decide to disrupt the status quo. Abandoning the cult of performance, they abandon their sole role as athletes to establish themselves, full and complete. Even if it means shattering the dream they inspired. Like the most successful American swimmer in history, Michael Phelps, who in the documentary Future champions, the price of glory, reveals that his athletic career largely caused him to experience deep depression. In Tokyo 2021, gymnast Simone Biles, fresh off her second gold medal in Paris, withdrew from competition to preserve her mental health before also starring in a Netflix documentary.

This is the foundation on which these sporting emotions slide; the beginning of the end of the mental health taboo. Long synonymous with psychiatric illness is gradually gaining traction in public debate. Everyone understands that they have it and that it is important to treat it. A new wind, to which athletes greatly contribute. “I’m not ashamed to say that I train my mind because it’s what I need, I’m at peace with it,” Olympic champion French cyclist Pauline Ferrand-Prevot told us recently. He surrounded himself with a therapist and a psychiatrist to prepare for the Games. And he insists on that, definitely. Even considering a second career. “It has helped me so much that if I can help others in turn, I would really like to do that.”