The Death of You: Life After Elite Sport

Arguably the greatest Olympian of all time, Michael Phelps, with twenty-eight Olympic medals to his name, was asked if he would like his children to follow in his footsteps. His answer, 'Honestly, in a perfect world, I’d say no. Just because I don’t want them to live in my footsteps. And I also know everything about it – I know the ins and the outs, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, you know, as a parent, it just – it frightens me.’ The truth is that the vast majority of the public don’t understand this alarming answer from Phelps. The question as to why so many elite sportspeople fall off the edge of a cliff in life when they retire is often answered in either a too complicated or too simplistic way to give people a meaningful answer. This book changes that. Using brutally honest interviews with sport stars Matthew Hoggard, Paul Walsh, Gail Emms, Tom May, Johnny Nelson and Clare Shine, Luke Sutton breaks down why this happens for a reader in a way that hasn’t been done yet. Anyone fascinated by sport or elite performance in general will be enthralled by this book. There is so much to take from it.