Commentary: ‘Walking away from swimming is not failure’ - Joscelin Yeo on life beyond the pool

SINGAPORE: When I worked at Suntec City after I retired from competitive swimming, it took me three years to realise there was a McDonald’s outlet there.

As an athlete, McDonald’s was never a part of my fuel source. Despite it being the go-to supper joint in the building after hours, I never paid attention to or even registered that it was McDonald’s that I walked past every day.

That’s the thing about humans; we have limited attentional and processing capabilities, and so we filter out what is not relevant to us.

Life as an athlete mirrored this selective focus; my time and attention were devoted to becoming the most successful swimmer I could possibly be.

I knew what I needed to eat and how much of it. I knew what time I had to get to bed and the little wiggle room there. I knew precisely how long it would take for me to go from alarm clock to being on the pool deck, down to the exact minute, so that I maximised my sleep. I was single-minded in my drive to be successful.

What happens though when that fire starts to die out? Where there was joy, was now dread. Where there was drive, was now drag. Would it pass? Was it just a phase? Or was that it?

Joseph Schooling’s retirement announcement on Tuesday (Apr 2) has brought the topic of elite sports and burnout back into the spotlight. In an interview this week with reporters, he said he just didn’t "enjoy the grind" anymore.

I get him. When the fire began to wane for me, I first tried to fan it back into flames. I thought that perhaps I’d lost focus and had not tended to it like I should have. I saw a spark and something slowly catching fire, and presumed that things were back on track. So I added more fuel because that was the right thing to do. More fanning. More effort. More