Clara Klug, three-time Para-Biathlon World Champion and two-time bronze medalist at Paralympics, is retiring. As the reason for this step, she cites an illness that she wants to make more public: depression.
The 28-year-old from Munich, who celebrated her greatest sporting successes at the 2019 Para-Biathlon World Championships and the 2018 Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang, has undergone renewed treatment for her depression. She turns her back on competitive sport, but not on sport itself. “I want to try new things,” she says in a press release from the Nordic Paraski Team.
One percent visual performance – sport only with a guide
Klug suffers from congenital Leber’s amaurosis. As a child, she was able to recognize colors and facial features, over the years everything darkened, and today she has less than one percent visual acuity. She was therefore only able to practice her sport with her trainer and guide Martin Härtl.
The gradual blindness, she reports, has always been associated with many burdens: fears about the future, interpersonal difficulties, efforts to find your way. In everyday life, she lets her dog guide her or gropes her way with the white cane. If she is on skis, she also has poles, but she was often unable to compensate for bumps or compression.
Home World Cup 2019 as a career highlight
In 2012 she entered the World Cup alongside Martin Härtl. After respectable World Championship results in 2015, the first medals were won two years later at the home World Championships in Finsterau – two silver medals and one bronze medal in biathlon, as well as second place in the overall World Cup.
This was followed by double bronze at the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang and triple gold at the 2019 World Championships in Prince George, Canada, as well as one silver and one bronze in cross-country skiing. At the end of the 2018/2019 season, he had won the overall biathlon world cup.
With success, the pressure of expectations increased
Great success – but Clara Klug, who missed the Paralympics in Beijing due to injuryconnected them with more burden than pleasure: “I can’t remember any competition that I was really satisfied with. I always thought: Actually, I was just lucky. And now I have to prove all the more that I deserve all this. “
Her own increasing pressure of expectations bothered her. Success paralyzed her. She had previously sought treatment for psychological problems, which she attributes primarily to everyday stress caused by her blindness. Now a lot broke into her again – with additional health consequences.
help with depression
Telephone counseling: anonymous, free advice around the clock:
phone (0800) 111 0 111 or (0800) 111 0 222
“Number against grief” hotline for children and young people: free advice:
phone 116 111. Parent phone: (0800) 111 05 50
Info telephone of the German Depression Aid: Tel. (0800) 33 44 533
Health insurance medical on-call service: 116 117
Corona as a fire accelerator
The ailing psyche weakened her immune system. Klug fell ill several times and started training again too hastily. Added to this was Corona, the 2020 World Cup in Östersund was canceled 24 hours before the first race. The pandemic had an extremely negative impact: Klug suffered panic attacks, felt listless, but still struggled to train. The depression hit hard.
Klug is now very open about her experiences. She now knows how irrational many of her thoughts were. That this irrationality is part of an illness that in the minds of many people is still associated more with personal weaknesses than with an illness. And now she wants to draw attention to them. Many people have been overwhelmed with their situation in recent years. If warning signs appeared, everyone hoped that things wouldn’t get that bad. She herself put up a facade to hide how bad it is.
Depression – often overlooked in sports
“If you have depression, the inhibition threshold to seek help is very high.” She advertises that more attention should be paid to psychological challenges in parasport than before. More disability-specific sensitivity is needed. “We live with our limitations 24/7,” she says. “This is often overlooked in the sports world. Our mental stress is even higher than that in competitive Olympic sports.”
How does it go from here? Clara Klug will continue to work in her trained profession as a computer linguist. The plan is also to get a diving license. Her motto: “Success is getting up one more time than you fall.” Recently, that wasn’t always possible for her. But it still applies.
Source: BR24 Sports
10/12/2022 – 8:54 am
