"It's not weak to put your hand up and ask for help... look where I ended" - Former U23 World champion opens up after drug abuse lead to his imprisonment
Cycling
Jack Bobridge had a promising career ahead of himself when he was crowned the U23 time trial world champion in 2009, which got him a contract at WT team Garmin for the next season. In 2011, he even finished fifth at the Worlds TT in the elite category, but that result also marks the point Bobridge's career entered a downward spiral. He retired in 2016. And a year later, the Australian hit the rock-bottom and got arrested for drug dealing.
"It got to the point where my whole body... it was a struggle to even get out of bed," he says in an episode of the Youtube program A Current Áffair. "I couldn't put my socks on because my feet were so sore, let alone get up and train." Bobridge had already turned to alcohol and drugs throughout his career to forget his problems.
"There was no competition anymore, so there was no barrier then. So it kind of opened the door. I didn’t matter. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted," he reflects now. In 2017, he was arrested after being caught selling MDMA during an undercover operation, for which he was sentenced to prison in 2019. "I was doing a lot of drugs. And obviously I was getting drugs for my friends at the time, which, I guess, some people will say, yeah, it’s dealing, but there was never any profit to be made from it."
Now, for the first time since he was released in early 2022, he is still remorseful. "I can take it on myself, but it's hard to take it on for everyone who lets you down. My daughter too, she was still so young. She didn't know what was happening," said Bobridge, who would have liked more support from the world that gave him so much in the years before.
"I take full responsibility for the things I've done and the drinking and the recreational drug side of things, but I wish there was more support for athletes," the Aussie said. "You feel like you're giving 100% to your sport and to your country and then when you're done, you're just dropped. That's it. You're done. There were never any phone calls, there were never any emails. There was nothing after I retired. It was just gone. You just disappeared."
Bobridge now works as a bricklayer and hopes his story can help others. "I just hope my story can help one person not to do what I did. It's not weak to put your hand up and ask for help. I didn't, and look where I ended up."
"It's not weak to put your hand up and ask for help." Good point, but who do you ask? I've certainly no experience similar to Mr. Bobridge here, but when life drops you so to speak, one of the great shortcomings of civilized society comes to bear in that there is no one to ask for help.
Maybe because you confound or refuse to analyse the differing definitions of civilised? I have long stopped describing general Western attitudes to life as civilised :-)
Wouldn't that make life easier, but no. A truly civilized society would leave no proverbial cracks open for people to fall through. Mr. Bobridge had to deal with the fact that society in a very uncivilized manner drops people when we falter.
If you find and fall through the deepest cracks there are parts of society that do their best but as an individual person trying to keep up appearances, you’re hardly likely to be noticed amongst the huge crowds seeking help, so EITHER you have to make that first big difficult step of seeking out available help, or you find out if you have any real friends. Some people do, some don’t. You are not necessarily to blame for not having friends but when you find that out a hard way, you should really question yourself as to how you’ll go on selecting your entourage in future.
You reference friends and entourage, but it is the pillars upon which we are taught to rely that routinely fail due in large part to poor design. This is the societal shortcoming that allows people facing difficult life-changing challenges to embrace self-reliance.
I spoke of friends in several different contexts, not everyone is very clear about the people around them really Being friends
"It's not weak to put your hand up and ask for help." Good point, but who do you ask? I've certainly no experience similar to Mr. Bobridge here, but when life drops you so to speak, one of the great shortcomings of civilized society comes to bear in that there is no one to ask for help.
That is an interesting take on things. Are you an athiest then?
Great so am I. Mainly road - flat ones or the downhill parts are what I'm good at........
Why would that matter or be of interest, Bobridge knows if he is or isn’t or could have looked for otherworldly answers instead of resorting to surrogate solutions, losing himself into something that might end up worse than your problem. Besides, he was obviously looking for human support and it is telling that the religious these days are getting very picky and calculating about who they really feel like helping. The guy miscalculated thinking he could expect club and country to be there for him, nothing more selfish than competitive environments, he should also have realised that if he wasn’t cycling for himself but for some greater good like country or greater evil like ego, it was bound to backfire.
Ponderous. I have found the precise opposite to be true as well, hence my original comment. Burying consciousness in substances seems to help no one in the long term. But relying upon others for help results in disappointment upon learning no one can hear.
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