Shi Tingmao, four-time Olympic diving gold medallist, opened up about her struggles with depression. This comes after American gymnast Simone Biles discussed her mental health at the Tokyo Games as she withdrew from the games. 

China’s Shi won the 3m springboard title for her second gold in Japan but cut a tearful figure in the immediate aftermath at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre.

The 29-year-old later confessed to wanting to quit diving after a subpar performance last year.

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“I have to really take care of my mental state and make sure I don’t get into a depression,” Shi said during a  press conference. 

“I have worked with a psychiatrist or psychologist who helped me quite a bit with some of the mental stresses of being a competitive diver and dealing with depression and things like that,” she added.

Hinting that she reached such a low that she might have given up the sport, she said, “I really love diving and I realised that there was no way that I could give it up. So to get to this point today was not easy.”

Shi Tingmao won two Golds at Rio 2016, revealing the internal conflict she has had to deal with.

“There are two of me in my mental state that actually fight with one another,” she said.

“Part of me says ‘you’re a gold medallist, you can take a break, you can be done’. Another part of me says ‘you can’t give this up, you love diving’.”

Shi further opened up about not being able to visit her family for 18 months as she was engrossed in the training and said “we actually had very little contact”.

“I’m sure my family have been worried for me but I also hope, through the screen, when we see each other, I can speak to my family and say that they have nothing to worry about, everything’s fine.”

This comes weeks after another of the world’s highest-profile athletes, Japanese star Naomi Osaka, took a break from tennis after revealing she had suffered depression.