"I couldn't spend two years crying every two days"

The Mill"Something very strange happened to me," confesses Anna Boada (Barcelona, 1992) in the small café located at the foot of the Roc Blanc de la Molina track. "In the months after winning the medal, I looked at the photos from that day and I didn't recognise myself. It was like I was seeing someone else."

Her mother liked to print out the photos of the feat and show her the newspapers that talked about it. But Anna was unable to look at them. "I couldn't because I saw someone else even though I knew it was me. They made me feel disgusted," she continues to relate with a coffee with milk in her hand during the conversation with the ARA after many years out of the media spotlight. The feat was that Anna, with Aina Cid, won in September 2018 the first medal – bronze – in a World Championship in an Olympic discipline in the history of Spanish women's rowing. But in the hours after, Anna was crying in a hotel in Plovdiv (Bulgaria), where the competition had taken place. And not exactly out of joy.

"For a few months now, I've been crying in my hotel room every other day after training, or even during training. I won the medal in this psychological situation. That afternoon I also locked myself in my hotel room to cry. Then I thought: 'Is it worth it? ' Both her partner in the coxless two-man event, Cid, and her two closest coaches were aware of Anna's suffering because they had seen it with their own eyes and she had told them about it herself.

"The coaches were trying to find a solution, but I don't think they were yet prepared to know how to do it. And I felt that Aina was moving away. I don't blame her, because she also had to survive her situation," Anna remembers. "In the last race before the World Championships, I was quite psychologically affected and we didn't do well at all. So I opened up to her and told her that I felt terrible, that I couldn't be thinking about the two years left until the Olympic Games [in Rio de Janeiro they had achieved an Olympic diploma with a sixth place] because I couldn't imagine crying every two days."

Where did the discomfort come from? "From the pressure and the accumulated physical fatigue, which affected me psychologically because I was much more sensitive and reacted unpleasantly more easily. It was a vicious circle." Was the first self-imposed? "The pressure came from myself. If we had finished fifth in the world the previous year, the only thing in my mind was that I could do better next time. But I think that this self-imposed pressure was also influenced by the coaches."

How did I notice it? "When we won the bronze medal at the World Championships, one of them said to me when I won it: 'Next year we'll be second or first, eh?' I couldn't believe it. He knew how I had lived that year. Just congratulate me and let's be happy and next year when we start we'll talk about it. But don't tell me right now because you'll literally suffocate me."

The decision to retire

Anna disappeared from the rowing map after the historic medal in Plovdiv. First, she went to do a month's cooperation in Africa and then she went to Australia for a few months, where her partner was living at the time. "My idea was to return to Spain taking advantage of the fact that we were given an award at the Spanish Rowing Federation gala, do another month of cooperation in Africa and go back to training to get strong. But then I suffered a fracture of the tibia and fibula and it was the final sign."

The federation gala, which was held in Madrid in March 2019, marked a before and after in Anna's life. When she went up to collect the award, she surprised almost everyone by reading a text in which she made public her mental health problem and announced her retirement. "Loneliness invades you because of the shame of being judged, of people knowing the reality, of being afraid to approach you to avoid getting infected," Boada read on stage. She was only 26 years old.

She finished her medical degree and stuck to that path. But rowing was still on her mind. "Many years later I still thought I would compete again, even though deep down I knew I wouldn't. Every time I saw important competitions or posts on social media related to the topic I still thought I could go back. My mind didn't close that option until a year or two ago," she admits. "Getting off social media helped me a lot."

A new life

Now, Anna lives with her partner in a camper van that they park somewhere in Cerdanya to sleep. And, during the day, she works in the medical team at the ski resorts of La Molina and La Masella while studying a master's degree in medical mountain rescue. "When I started doing mountain sports, like climbing and mountaineering, and I finally stopped rowing, that's when I felt really better." The most important question: how is she? "I'm doing great. I've found a new identity and new goals," she answers with a smile that the whiteness of the snow around her makes shine even more.

Have there been any steps forward in the way we view mental health? "Victòria Cid, Aina's sister, has just published a book about her depression [Simply, ho. The greatest victory against depressionThree years after I broke up, she also broke up with the same coaches and the same federation. I don't know to what extent they did anything about it after what happened to me," Anna laments.