After announcing that she would skip the Tokyo Olympics to protect her mental health, the Australian basketball star Liz Cambage said that she had been “at a breaking point” for a month over the prospect of entering a Covid bubble and playing in an empty arena at the Games.
In a series of videos posted to Instagram on Friday, Cambage said that once she made the decision to withdraw from Australia’s women’s basketball team, “I felt a world of anxiety and pressure and heaviness I had been carrying lift straight off me.”
“I had been having breakdowns in the car park at Whole Foods, nonstop panic attacks, hyperventilating at the thought of going into one of the most pressure situations, which is already in a bubble, with no fans, no friends,” Cambage said.