The older you get, the more you grow, the more feminine you become – the more thoughts you get in your head, your body develops… And this is probably the hardest period in sport.
Because you just have to get through it, you can’t get rid of it. You can’t push it away through pressure or constant weigh-ins… Well, maybe you can, but only for a year or so. In any case, everyone goes through it. And this is where the people around the athlete play a crucial role; they need to understand that it will pass. That it won’t always be this hard, and you won’t always feel this way about yourself. I think every female athlete has gone through something like this. Many of them, at least.
In my case, there was a time when you live your life and simply don’t like yourself, just because your value as an athlete is tied to being thin. When you’re thin, you’re made to believe that your jumps work: “that means you win competitions, that means you are valuable.” That chain needs to be broken. Because you are valuable the way you are, regardless of how much you weigh.
That understanding comes later. When it came to me, I said, “That’s it, I’m not going to weigh myself anymore.” My coaches must have seen some kind of awareness in me; there was never another word about weigh-ins. I started eating normally and stopped being afraid of breakfast. None of us used to eat breakfast, because we had weigh-ins in the morning.”