INSTRUCTIONS: Read and complete the article with sentences A – F below.
1) For some people the pain of saying goodbye never leaves them.
2) Others can’t resist the change of one last “pay day”
3) Some sport people go on playing too long.
4) But for the lucky few, retirement can mean a successful new career.
5) Retirement for people in general is traumatic.
6) One of the hardest things for any sport people to do is to know when to retire.
WHEN YOU HEAR THE FINAL WHISTLE
a) 6 One of the hardest things for any sportsperson to do is to know when to retire. Do you retire when you are at your physical ‘peak’ or do you wait until your body (or your coach) tells you that it’s time to go? But even harder is finding the answer to the question ‘What am I going to do with the rest of my life?’
b) ______ ‘There’s a high risk of depression and people often find adjusting to a new way of life difficult’, says Ian Cockerill, a sports psychologist. ‘For sportspeople, there’s an extra trauma – the loss of status, the loss of recognition, and the loss of the glamour. That’s the hardest part.’ As Eddie Acaro, the US Jockey says, ‘When a jockey retires, he becomes just another little man.’
c) ______ Perhaps they just can’t stand life without the ‘high’ of playing professional sport. Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player of all time, retired three times. He retired once from the Chicago Bulls, made a successful comeback with the Bulls, then retired again. His second comeback with an inferior team ended in failure and he retired for ever at the age of 38. Jordan said, ‘There will never be anything I do that will fulfil me as much as competing did.’
d) ______ Muhammad Ali needed the money, but his comeback fight, at the age of 39, against Trevor Berbick, was one of the saddest spectacles in modern sport. After losing to Berbick, Ali retired permanently. Three years later he developed Parkinson’s disease.
e) ______ As Jimmy Greaves, an ex-England international footballer said, ‘I think that a lot of players would prefer to be shot once their career is over.’ Many of them spend their retirement in a continual battle against depression, alcohol, or drugs.
f) ______ Franz Beckenbauer is a classic example of a footballer who won everything with his club, Bayern Munich. After retiring he became a successful coach with Bayern and finally President of the club. John McEnroe, the infamous ‘bad boy’ of tennis, is now a highly respected and highly paid TV commentator. But sadly, for most sportspeople, these cases are the exceptions.
