Transcript

IAN BRAID

From my own experience dealing with athlete welfare, if it went from somebody saying to me, Ian, I've not been picked for a major games, then it came with trauma as well as a request for help. And I did a lot of that, particularly in the lead up to Rio across any number of sports. I had the pressure of the duty of care review being undertaken by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, which I thought was of significant importance to the future of the British Athletes Commission. And in the back end of 2016, I got more and more involved in not just individual people seeking my help, but groups of athletes. And that led to some of the investigations that have been made public in the media, et cetera.

The end result in May of last year was I realised, finally, that something was wrong with me. It took a prod from my son, Harry, who asked me whether he thought I was working too hard. And my answer was, I don't know how to relax anymore. And then, the following week, the Braid household welcomed Fred the dog. And when Fred arrived, the house was just absolutely joyous. It was giddy with excitement, and I felt absolutely none of it, and I felt no empathy with this dog that had just created more chaos in my house by arriving in Chateau Braid.

I was asked to fill in a personal health questionnaire by the medical profession. I scored 22 out of 27. And I was asked to fill in a general anxiety disorder questionnaire, and I scored 21 out of 22. I reflect back that I was very poorly. It was all situational. It was all due to the pressure of my job and the loneliness of my role, not, per se, CEO of the British Athletes Commission, but the loneliness of being a CEO in a very pressurised environment.

So I took time off work. I was off for 30 days of the 112 million days lost to anxiety, stress, and depression. I went back to work, and I knew I was done, so I signed a settlement agreement with my board and left at the end of July. When I was on the floor, I thought I'd let not only my family down, but I thought I'd let 1,500 members of the BAC down. And I had lost my identity, I'd lost my self-esteem, and I'd lost my confidence.