Every Olympic games, be it winter or summer, presents logistical challenges.
With the 2026 Winter Olympics being held across northern Italy, Team USA (and other competing nations) are stretched across eight different athletes’ villages.
While they’ll have plenty of support staff on the ground in Milano-Cortina, the US Olympic and Paralympic Team’s Psychological Services Team are leaving nothing to chance.
Speaking on Optimize Mind Performance’s Podcast, Senior Director, Psychological Services Dr Jess Bartley explained how they’ve used technology to ensure that every athlete across eight athletes’ villages gets the assistance they need.
“We’ve done a really good job of using our education of identifying signs and symptoms and who are our allies and who could help us,” she said.
“You can easily push someone to Headspace or to Optimize. One of the things that we’ve done in the past is on every athlete’s pillow we have these eye masks and neck pillows, and we actually called out our apps like, ‘hey, this is actually a module on sleep, go to optimize and do this or go to headspace and do this’.
“We’re already forward thinking around where we can push people to technology.”
All of this preparation comes after Dr Bartley and her team were “slammed” during the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.
There the Psychological Services had a large, centralized resource center that included many comforts of home were available to athletes and coaching staff.
“We had huge bean bags and couches. If athletes forgot their shampoo, their conditioner, every snack under the sun that was American that maybe you would miss,we shipped all of it over there,” Dr Bartley said.
“That’s where our team posted up with the dieticians. Everybody knew that’s where we were. And during the games, we had 1200 sessions. We were slammed.”
That’s why technology will be key for Dr Bartley and her team.
They are expecting to once again be inundated with one-on-one sessions with athletes.
These sessions don’t just relate to the pressure they’re feeling in their performance.
As Dr Bartley puts it, life outside of competition doesn’t stop.
“We’re talking through ‘Hey, I actually just got in a fight with my boyfriend and now I’ve compete’ or, ‘X and Y just happened at home’ or ‘my gosh, I forgot to pay my water bill and my roommates pissed at me because their water shut off’.
“I think that’s one of the things that I learned during the first few games was life still happens.
“We have athletes who have very real things happen, experienced a miscarriage or a grandparent dies so things happen that aren’t related to performance and impact performance.”
You can listen to the full conversation with Dr Jess Bartley below:
