Blanca Fernández Ochoa was one of the great skiers of Spanish sport. She, from Madrid, made history at the 1992 Albertville Olympic Games by becoming the first Spanish woman to win an Olympic medal. However, her light went out on August 24, 2019. The former Olympic skier left home that summer morning and never returned. After intense days of searching, the authorities found her body in La Peñota, a peak in Madrid’s Guadarrama mountain range.
Now, more than four years after her death, her sister, Lola Fernández Ochoa, gave an interview on RTVE Catalunya on the occasion of the inauguration of the Mental Health and Sports Tour ”Fundación Blanca y Renfe”, which will visit five cities and whose The objective is to raise awareness about mental health care in sports.
In the interview, the sister of the Olympic champion opened up about her sister Blanca’s documentary, which will also be screened in this initiative, and about how success and her mental health problems marked the skier’s sporting career.
”The problem my sister had was that she was ashamed to admit that she had a mental health problem and she didn’t want to ask for help,” she began by saying. ”I told her many times, ”Blanca, let’s ask for help,” and she told me no, that she was ashamed. “She felt like a little girl,” she admitted.
Furthermore, the interviewee claimed that retired athletes have less help with these mental health problems. ”I think that in this country we bury very well, when athletes are active, everyone takes photos with them. And once the lights run out it’s very difficult because they don’t get any help,’ she said.
Therefore, the initiative’s main objectives are to let all athletes know that “they are not alone.” ”Once they retire, they have important support, both psychological and whatever they need,” he clarified. Regarding the documentary, Lola Fernández Ochoa revealed that it had been made to normalize the issue of mental health. ”If you are an ordinary citizen and you have a mental health problem and you see a great athlete asking for help, then you can too. “It is not an act of weakness, but of courage,” she concluded.
