Athletes who contract COVID-19 come out of it little, if at all, confused in their path to performance. As proof, Canadian athletes participate in the Olympic Games at the top of their game.
From his hotel room in Beijing, the leader of the speed skating integrated support team, François Bieuzen, displays a broad smile. The Olympic adventure begins for him, and the pandemic troubles have in no way slowed down his proteges.
All the athletes linked to the Institut national du sport du Québec (INS) came out of the disease “with performances at least equivalent, if not better, compared to those before”.
Within a sample of athletes infected in the same proportions as the rest of the population, only “1% or 2%” of athletes came out with slightly more persistent symptoms. “Apart from that 1%, everyone came back like an athlete who had the flu or a cold. »
“Not that COVID-19 helped, but it didn’t stop the athletes in their progress,” he summarizes.
These anecdotal observations roughly agree with the short scientific literature on the subject.
A British study indicates that the performance of soccer professionals “persistently and substantially decreases by about 5%” in athletes who have contracted COVID-19. Another analysis of around twenty NBA basketball players does not report any lasting effect of the virus on sports results.
It must be said that François Bieuzen and the INS specialists have prepared everything so that the athletes return to the game “100%”. The gradual return to training was very smooth thanks to a six-step process “modeled on return to play protocols after a concussion”.
The athletes were thus “out of their classic training context” for two weeks, but for the most part had resumed the exercises two or three days after the first symptoms.
Teletraining
If their performances are at the rendezvous, Canadian athletes have not yet returned to their former comforts. Elite training centers require ultra-strict sanitary rules, the only way for them to remain open despite all the confinements.
“The members of our speed skating teams have been training for almost a year with the masks on their faces all the time. They never took them off. That did not prevent them from breaking records or continuing to progress,” confirms the man who will become the scientific director of the INS this spring.
The inevitable addition of home workouts has also encouraged innovation, he adds. “With hindsight, it also allowed us to be a little more creative about certain things, certain strategies or training practices. »
The most difficult was from the point of view of mental health, underlines François Bieuzen. “When they didn’t see the end of the tunnel, when they were training to train without having the prospect of competition or the feeling of having fun in those moments, it was more difficult. As soon as we were able to have these perspectives again, it took off again. »
This text is taken from our newsletter “Coronavirus mail” of February 7, 2022. To subscribe, click here.