Hyderabad: Stephanie Rice, Three-time Olympic gold medallist from Australia who helps her country athletes prepare for mentally for high-pressure games and competition has expressed that she wants to work with best swimmers from India.
"Mental performance is very important and now countries are focusing a lot on this. The pressure of an Olympic performance is huge, expectations, the media presence, fans... everything."
"So, training the mind is something I worked on, learning how to get the best out of myself mentally in those conditions. I am helping a lot of current Australian athletes get ready mentally. Mind training is something I am passionate about. I will be working with the athletes in our program one-on-one… about handling that kind of intensity," she told in an interview with a news website.
"I think it is because every coach in Australia has trained the likes who coached Michael Phelps or my coach Michael Bohl. They have had an opportunity to see what the best coaches in the world do and how they train their athletes and then they go and create their own programme," Rice said.
Rice who is especially interested in how to train the brain to handle the intense stress of competition as she knows what it takes to thrive under pressure. The legendary swimmer has three swimming gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics with world record times. Rice recently visited India.
When asked about her early retirement after the London 2012 Olympics she said,"It is not uncommon for an athlete to be at their peak from 14 to 24; a 10-year span is common. When you are an Olympic athlete, the focus is on the Games. For me, the focus was on finishing after an Olympic Games, that is, a four-year cycle. After London, I decided to stop, instead of doing another four years of competition."
While pointing out that Asian sporting events are important for Indian swimmers she said," In any sport, the Olympic Games is at the top but I see a reference to the Asian Games a lot. If you were to ask any swimmer from Australia, USA or China, they care what you do at the World Championships or at an Olympic Games. Those are the events when you are racing against swimmers from the best countries in the world."
