Two-time Olympian Jack Woolley found the first week after the Paris Games to be a challenging period.
JACK WOOLLEY COULD feel the dreaded question lurking over him within a week of his Olympics campaign winding down.After competing at an event of such enormity and such global interest, how does one just turn the page and return to normality?
This time, he was one fight away from competing for a bronze medal when he lost his repechage bout to Adrián Vicente of Spain. LA 2028 is the one where he hopes to make his mark on the podium if he can keep his arc trending in that direction. But there’s a lot of time to fill in the interim. “You build your whole life for this event and then it’s like, ‘What now?’ You’re literally learning to do everything that people would call a normal life. Other people have more of a break because they have seasons in their sport. A lot of people go on holidays, but a holiday for me is to be at home.
There was some comfort in knowing that others, whether they had a medal or not, could relate to his struggles. “There’s been a couple of moments where you’d write out a paragraph of how you’re feeling and you both send it at the same time. And it’s basically a copy and paste. The feedback has been basically the same, no matter the result. Talking to an Olympic champion and they’re feeling the exact same. You don’t want to rush getting back into things but at the same time, you don’t know any better.”
Jack Woolley Paris 2024 Reflections Taekwondo
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