depression and fear of death
Olympic champion Harting collapses
07/06/2023 2:24 p.m
Discus Olympic champion Christoph Harting speaks for the first time about his depression, and the Berliner also suffered from severe panic attacks that made him feel like he was dying. Ironically, after the reconciliation with his brother Robert, his life falls apart. Harting is doing better now.
Nothing worked with Christoph Harting. Depressions. “Imagine waking up and lying under a huge, large, heavy, black blanket. And you can’t get it off. You can’t even turn off the alarm clock,” says the Olympic discus champion from Rio in an interview with ” Berlin newspaper”.
Harting, the 2.07 meter giant, speaks openly and impressively about his problems. “It’s a disease that’s becoming more and more socially acceptable. The stigma is falling. Nobody’s immune to it. It doesn’t matter how successful or unsuccessful he was. And yes, it hit me too,” he says before the German Athletics Championships in Kassel next weekend.
Ironically, after the reconciliation with his brother Robert, Olympic champion of 2012, his life got out of joint. “It was an absolute mental breakdown. I was in the clinic, was being treated psychotherapeutically and psychologically, and there was also the setting with medication,” says Harting, who also suffered from panic attacks: “Oh, that was terrible. You have the feeling, too die. You have to pull yourself out. It’s an incredible fight that makes you incredibly tired.”
“The Storm Has Moved On”
Added to this was the separation from his wife, after which “I moved out of our house. From April 2021 to August 2022 I couldn’t find an apartment. I slept with my coach for two months, then with a buddy in the office, with friends, in the throwing house, in the car or was in the training camp,” says Harting, who was hit hard by the housing shortage in Berlin: “I was looking for an apartment for a year and a half, I was everywhere and nowhere.”
Harting is doing better now. “You learn exercises in psychological care: How can you pull yourself out, what can you do? What can you think of?” He said: “The storm has moved on. The water is still a bit choppy, but the direction is finite clear again.” Harting wants to be in the ring at the German Championships on Sunday, he’s not one of the favourites, the upcoming World Championships in Budapest are “unrealistic”, he says. But don’t give up. Harting’s goal: the Olympics in “Paris 2024”.