Michael Phelps along with Apolo Ohno, Lolo Jones, Shaun White, Katie Uhlaender, Steve Holcomb, Bode Miller, and Sasha Cohen are speaking out about post-Olympic depression in The Weight of Gold.
The trailer shows the Olympic athletes speaking about what it’s like to compete for “40 seconds [that] will dictate our human lives,” and returning home after the Olympics.
Michael Phelps says, “None of us had normal childhoods.” “A good 80 percent, maybe more” of athletes experience some kind of “post-Olympic depression,” he adds. “I thought of myself as just a swimmer, and not a human being. That’s where I was like, ‘Why don’t I just end it all?’”
The Weight of Gold will also includes an archival interview with bobsledder Steven Holcomb, who died from an alcohol and sleeping pill overdose in 2017, as well an interview with Jeret “Speedy” Peterson’s mother. Peterson was a three-time Olympian aerial skier who died by suicide in 2011.
The documentary will be released on HBO and HBO Max on July 29, which is when the Summer Olympics were scheduled to take place in Tokyo, Japan.
Check out the moving trailer below.
