TORONTO -- Simon Whitfield finds solace navigating the ocean swells off Victoria's Oak Bay. The champion triathlete can spend hours on his stand-up paddleboard, alone with his thoughts as the rhythmic lap of the waves provides the soundtrack.
"It's my heaven," Whitfield said. "Absolute heaven."
The 41-year-old retired in 2013, but his transition into life after sports was anything but easy. When the bottom dropped out, Whitfield found that even an Olympic gold medal doesn't necessarily soften the landing.
What he missed most: his "alone time," the weekly 30 hours of solitary training, whether out on his bike, or following the black line face-down in a swimming pool.
"I just thrive on and love that alone time, and I don't get it anymore. It's a constant battle," Whitfield said in a recent interview. "In the pool, you can't do anything else, your head is in the water. My daughter asked me the other day, 'Why do you like swimming so much?' I said 'Because I get to put my face in the water, and nobody can talk to me.'
"She looked at me like I was from another planet," Whitfield said with a laugh.
This summer's Rio Olympics will bring a flood of retirements. And with them with surely come emotional turmoil.
Whitfield raced to Olympic triathlon gold in 2000 in Sydney, then silver eight years later in Beijing. He crashed and broke his collarbone at the 2012 London Games, and was forced to withdraw from his final Olympic race.
In the ensuing months, his marriage to wife Jennie fell apart.
"I wasn't prepared for that," he said of his divorce. "A lot of my self-identity was anchored in the idea of being this very successful athlete who also had a very successful family life. It turned out I didn't. I found that very, very difficult at first -- I still find it difficult -- to reconcile that how could I be so wrong?"
The father to daughters Pippa and Evelyn hasn't swam, biked or run for more than two days in a row since 2012. He initially dabbled in numerous businesses simultaneously, spreading himself so thin "I wasn't doing a good job of anything."
The missing thread through his story was his treasured time alone. Sport, to Whitfield, was active meditation. And once those hours of single-minded contemplation, the thing that had always kept him calm and centred, were gone, he was lost. His decisions, he said, became reactionary and impulsive.
"That was a huge, huge factor for me. . . it's overwhelmingly the thing that stands out for me," Whitfield said from his Victoria home. "The routine and ritual of athletic existence, or any single-minded focus, whatever it is -- music, art -- is so wonderful, because you express yourself in that way, and it's very intentional.
"The day after the Olympics, I was like 'Sweet, I don't have to get up at 6:30 every single morning and do the same thing.' But I didn't realize that embedded in that routine and ritual was . . . my space for myself, and that was actually the key to why I was doing really well."
Jeremiah Brown rowed on Canada's men's eight team that won silver at the London Olympics, and is now the national manager for Game Plan.
A partnership between the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees, Sport Canada and the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute Network, Game Plan was launched last fall in an effort to ease the transition into post-competitive life.
"We have indoor volleyball players who are in their late-30s, with complete investment in their sport careers, and finding out 'Well jeez, where have I left myself?' That's a really tough place to be," Brown said.
Game Plan works to connect athletes with opportunities such as internships or other career-learning experiences, so they have a plan in place before the lights in the arena are shut off.
"We're trying to say the story doesn't stop at the podium," Brown said.
Ken Pereira wasn't prepared for the day he played his last game for Canada's men's field hockey team. The former team captain had amassed a remarkable 348 caps, a Canadian record that still stands. But a coaching change in 2012, after Canada failed to qualify for the London Olympics, left the Unionville, Ont., native out in the cold.
He wasn't invited back to camp.
"It was just a whole mess," the 42-year-old said. "They didn't let me know, they didn't say 'Hey Ken, we're going in a totally different direction, thank you so much for 20 years.' I would've been upset, because I still would have wanted to play, but I would have understood a bit more.
"It was kind of disappointing, how it ended," added Pereira, who also played pro in Europe. "Obviously I would have loved to have it end another way."
Looking back, Pereira wishes he'd planned better for that day before it arrived.
"For 22 years, all I'd known was playing hockey, and travelling and training," Pereira said. "That's all you do. So all of a sudden, you've got to figure out what your future is, how to make money, how to survive. I probably should have planned better for a career after hockey. If I were to talk to anyone on that, that's what I'd say.
"I remember always saying 'Oh, I'll figure it out. Something will come up.' Then all of a sudden, when it's over and you're done, you're like 'Woah. What am I going to do now?"'
Deidra Dionne, an Olympic bronze medallist in aerials skiing, was one of the consultants on Game Plan, a iniative that's close to her heart after the death of her friend Jeret Peterson. The American won silver in aerials at the Vancouver Olympics, and committed suicide 17 months later.
"Like a lot of Olympians, he thought that if he won a medal it would complete him in some way, and life would be easier," Dionne said. "But life doesn't become easier because of one special day in your life, so he lost his battle with alcoholism.
"That was my incentive to say there needs to be at least mental health support for athletes, so that there's something that, when that athlete is lonely, they know there is someone they can call."
A benign brain tumour forced Dionne to retire in 2009. She had a back-up plan, thanks to her parents.
"My parents strongly believed in having balance in my life, and made it very clear that the Olympic dream is fabulous, but school has to be a part of that equation," said Dionne.
She'd already completed an undergrad degree and written her LSAT by the time she retired, and the 34-year-old from North Battleford, Sask., is now a lawyer.
Athletes facing post-Rio retirement with no plan are "already behind in life," she said.
"My advice would actually be to the 14-year-old athlete. Not having a plan only makes it feel lonelier and a bigger obstacle when you finally do stop, so I think it starts at that age that you decide you're going to become a high-performance athlete.
"High-performance sport ends for every single person, regardless of money made, regardless of what sport you're in, or how long you can make it work and last, it ends. So you need to think of the 60 years after it as well."
Whitfield has found happiness in his career as a co-founder of Relentless Pursuit Partners, an investment health and wellness company. He credits his business partner Brenda Irwin for "pulling me out of the quagmire of this mess I made."
He plays "Thursday night soccer," his one competitive outlet, and appreciates what he calls "the theatre and poetry of sport."
It took Pereira three years to find his way to firefighting. He's completed the training program and is interviewing for jobs.
"It took me a while to figure out. I was still on the edge of wanting to play. I was still struggling with 'What should I do?"' said Pereira, who still plays on Canada's indoor team.
That rush of exhiliration that came with competing remains elusive.
"I don't get the endorphins coursing through my veins like I used to," said Brown, whose office staff takes afternoon exercise breaks. "If I get really frustrated, I'll crank out 30 push-ups. Do what I need to to keep me in touch with my body.
"It's tough, you go from training five hours a day and your body being this machine like a Lamborghini that you're trying to tweak and make better and better, now to being a regular person in society, with all these commitments."
Pereira works out daily and takes pride in coaching, but said the thrill of playing international matches, or marching in an Olympic opening ceremonies will be tough to match.
"Hopefully in firefighting, if I do something cool there, pull someone out of a fire or something, I'm sure that would be pretty neat too," he said.
Dionne meets a fellow retired Olympian on Saturdays for a pilates class, and said she's learned to exercise for health, rather than exercise to achieve.
"That was probably one of my tougher lessons," she said. "It doesn't feel like enough just to go for a walk, it doesn't feel enough ever. It only feels enough if you're in the gym going hard."
The intense rush of competition is missing, she said. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.
"There were great moments and there were scary moments and bad moments and unhappy moments," Dionne said of her career. "It's nostalgia to look back and say 'I lived my passion so I was happy every day.' Because that wasn't true either.
"There were many days when you're unhappy or slightly injured or just homesick. So maybe it's not the roller-coaster that sport was, and I'm kind of happy to be off the roller-coaster."
