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Clara Klug at the shooting range in Pyeongchang 2018
Photo: Jan Woitas/ dpa
The three-time Para-Biathlon World Champion and two-time Paralympic bronze medalist Clara Klug ended her sports career due to depression.
At the same time, the 28-year-old campaigned for more psychological sensitivity in para-sports.
"I don't have the strength to get up - and that's a direct result of my depression," said the woman from Munich, who has less than one percent visual acuity due to progressive blindness, on Wednesday in a statement from the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS).
"A healthy head is also part of competitive sport," says Klug, "but I feel really bad. I always thought I could cure the disease while I continued to exercise. But I definitely didn't manage it." even in the wrong direction.
Because of several falls, she missed a World Cup.
Because she fractured her shoulder joint on a downhill run in Östersund in January, she was also absent from the Paralympics in Beijing in March.
"In such a case, an anxiety disorder is particularly nasty because it keeps replaying the scenario, you keep imagining worse scenarios," said Klug.
The athlete from PSV Munich won double bronze at the 2018 Paralympics in Pyeongchang with her trainer and guide Martin Härtl, where she was also in the limelight as the flag bearer at the closing ceremony.
In addition, she won gold in biathlon three times, silver three times and bronze twice in biathlon and cross-country skiing.
But the successes were more of a burden than pleasure.
“I can't remember any competition that I was really happy with.
I always thought: Actually, I was just lucky.
And now I have to prove all the more that I deserve all this,” said Klug.
She had previously suffered from mental problems due to the creeping blindness, which worsened during the corona pandemic.
She had panic attacks and felt listless.
The nearer the Paralympics in Beijing, the worse the depression got.
When she missed her big goal due to injury, she isolated herself.
»I always wanted to do everything in the best possible way, but I never heard what my body wanted«.
With her trainers, she was "often overwhelmed with the problems because they couldn't assess how serious it really is," said Klug.
Pathological exhaustion and exhaustion due to enormous amounts of training are now "difficult to distinguish".
In order to raise awareness in this regard, she dared to go public.
The environment was overwhelmed with their situation
She did not find offers of help from the team environment to be tangible and targeted enough.
"If you have depression, the inhibition threshold to seek help is very high," said Klug.
Many people have been overwhelmed with their situation in recent years.
She is now campaigning for more attention to psychological challenges in para-sports.
»We live with our limitations 24/7.
This is often overlooked in the sports world.
Our mental stress is even higher than that in competitive Olympic sports,” said Klug, who is being treated again for her depression.
As a computer linguist at the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office, she is now looking for a new challenge.
see/sid/dpa