Social media has transformed elite sport, turning every performance into an instant conversation. Former BBC Sports Correspondent Chris Hollins explains the impact that scrutiny can have on recovery and resilience.
For generations, elite athletes have faced the pressure of expectation, carrying the hopes of a nation while navigating the physical and psychological demands of competing at the highest level. But while the pressure may not have changed, the environment surrounding athletes certainly has.
Today, every performance is analysed in real time. The journey back from disappointment, injury or mental struggle is no longer a private process. Instead, recovery now unfolds under constant public scrutiny.
Former BBC Sports Correspondent Chris Hollins has spent decades covering Olympic athletes and witnessing the realities behind both success and failure. Speaking to Back in Action, he explained why social media has transformed the recovery process and why rebuilding confidence has become one of the greatest challenges facing modern sport.
For athletes already fighting to recover, there is often little room left to breathe.
When every performance is public
The pressure to win has always been a part of elite sport. Long before social media existed, Olympic athletes were driven by expectations and the pursuit of success. According to Chris Hollins, that fundamental pressure has not changed.
“Most Olympic athletes wanting to win, to pick up a gold medal, needing to be self-motivated and having the right people around them has never changed,” he says.
What has changed is the environment surrounding performance. Modern athletes now compete in an era of constant visibility. 24-hour sports coverage means performances can be dissected instantly by millions of people.
“The scrutiny has never been as intense,” Hollins says.
Unlike previous generations, criticism no longer ends when the event finishes. Athletes can find themselves facing a wave of online reaction before they’ve even had time to process a result themselves.
Hollins believes the challenge is not trying to stop the criticism but learning how to respond to it.
“You’ve got to manage the manageable,” he says. “If you can control what you can control; injuries, training programmes, success and failure. I can do that with my team around me. I cannot control the idiots that are going to troll me on social media.”
In an age where every performance can become a talking point, learning to separate constructive feedback from online noise has become a crucial skill for athletes attempting to perform and recover at the highest level.
Confidence becomes the injury
While social media has increased the scrutiny athletes face during physical struggle, Hollins believes its impact is felt most during periods of psychological hardship.
Physical injuries often come with a degree of understanding from supporters. Rehabilitation programmes and recovery timelines provide visible explanations for why an athlete may not be performing at their best. Recovering from a loss of confidence, however, is far less straightforward.
“Where social media is particularly cruel is loss of confidence, form and belief,” Hollins says.
“Being injured is a classic. There’s not a lot you can do about it. You’re in the hands of the medical team, you’re doing your very best and eventually you come back.”
For Hollins though, the real challenge begins when performances start to decline without an obvious explanation.
“You can imagine how that is a really negative cycle. You have a bad game, you get crucified online, then you have a loss of confidence, you have another bad game and it just gets worse and worse.”
In a sporting environment where reaction is instant, athletes are often attempting to rebuild belief in themselves while thousands of people continue to analyse every move.
Recalling a point once made by former football player Tony Cascarino, Hollins says: “What would be really good is if above the number on the back of your shirt you could write, ‘Having a bad time at home’, that sort of thing. So when you run out on the pitch, people can empathise.”
The point may be humorous, but the message still sticks.
“We’ve all gone to work where there are other things on our mind, other pressures. What people don’t know is they’ve got an Achilles problem, or whatever it is. That relentless pressure comes with success.”
The team behind the comeback
For Hollins, one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding elite sport is that recovery is an individual process. While athletes are often celebrated as lone heroes, the reality is that comebacks are rarely achieved alone.
When confidence begins to disappear, he believes those support systems become as important as ever.
“That’s when you really do need to pull on your team around you,” he says. “Whether it’s friends, mates, a husband, a wife. That’s when you have to dig deep.”
Hollins also believes the focus should not be on trying to stop criticism, but on helping athletes understand that much of the online noise is beyond their control.
“I would love to be able to put a barrier up to the athlete, or a filter, because it’s just noise. It doesn’t mean anything.
“Any professional athlete out there just needs a barrier around them. People that he or she can trust, that they can go to for advice.”
One athlete who stands out to Hollins for their sense of confidence and attitude to rebuilding is Dame Kelly Holmes. Before the 2004 Athens Olympics, Holmes had endured years of injury setbacks and uncertainty. Despite entering the Games with questions surrounding her fitness, there was a sense of confidence that had been missing previously.
“She said, ‘I’ve never been in such good shape. I’ve always been running with an injury.’”
What followed became one of the most iconic moments in British Olympic history, as Holmes won gold medals in both the 800m and 1500m.
For Hollins, the achievement represented far more than a medal-winning performance.
“You could share that joy because, although I only had a little pocket of the problems she’d been through, you understood some of what she’d had to overcome,” Hollins says.
It is a reminder that while audiences often celebrate the comeback moment, they rarely witness the years of setbacks and recovery that make those moments possible.
In the social media era, athletes may face more scrutiny than ever before. But as Hollins sees it, the fundamentals of recovery remain unchanged. Success still depends on surrounding yourself with the right people, managing what you can control and finding a way to keep moving forward when confidence is hardest to find.
