Sport psychology services to high performance athletes during These are trying times for us all. COVID-19 has altered our lives as citizens. The changes associated with the current pandemic have presented sport and exercise psychologists with many challenges and opportunities related to sport performance, physical activity and health. Here, we focus on what was, and is presently, being encountered by mental performance consultants in relation to the aspiring Olympic athletes they are supporting.Within recent weeks, mental performance consultants working with Olympic aspirants have evidenced a growing number of suggestions how aspiring athletes might proceed in their sports and in their broader lives, based on their national conditions and regional responses to the pandemic. Each national funding agency, Olympic committee, federal government, and sport organisation, is rolling out strategies of how mental performance consultants can work effectively with clients in what for many, but not all, is a socially distanced world.Discussions have varied from the challenges that athletes are encountering to issues associated with social isolation, career disruption, qualification process uncertainty, and unconventional and limited access to effective training environments and training partners. Underpinning these considerations is the health and wellbeing of athletes in their pursuits toward excellence.Historically, editorials within the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology were paired with special issues, such as the one focused on international approaches to Olympic athlete performance, published in 2016. Within the current editorial, however, there is a deviation in approach, caused by a global circumstancesport is not being experienced as usual; the challenges posed for those engaging in sport, region by region, are uncharted.The focus we have set, in what should have been the 2020 Olympic year, is placed on the shared challenges and the emergence of solutions that mental performance consultants are presently undertaking in their work with athletes. The co-authors of this editorial are from Asia, Europe, and North America. We have published on the topic of Olympic performance and we are currently immersed in work with Olympic athletes in our respective countries. What follows is a synthesised commentary.The reader might posit that embedded in each author's work, approaches are idiosyncratic and driven partly by culture and context, which is a correct assumption. For example, some of us are working from a distance, where others are consulting face-to-face. However, what we share in common is astounding, despite our respective locations and circumstances. We present this editorial, structured into three temporal stages: (a) before the 2020 Olympics were postponed, (b) once the Olympics were postponed, and (c) the path being re-set toward Tokyo, 2021.
Before Olympic postponementLife tends to be normal before crisis transitions are experienced, within and outside of highperformance sport. Within high-per...