Olympian Sam Dakin On OCD, Nerves And What Gold Is Actually Worth

For two years, the same question repeated in Sam Dakin's head a thousand times a day. He had no idea what was happening to him.

Turns out, Sam — who was training for the Olympics at the time — was suffering from OCD. Not the light-switch, hand-washing version most people picture, but the intrusive-thought kind that loops in your head all day and won't let go.

It wasn’t until he found a Reddit thread talking about the phenomenon that he finally started to understand what was going on. The relief was extraordinary.

He’s spent the years since talking about it openly, because almost nobody does.

Sam is a double Olympian and Commonwealth Games team sprint bronze medallist who retired after Glasgow this year — while he was still fast, and while he still loved the bike. We get into what nerves are actually for, why a gold medal is worth nothing without the four years behind it, what it takes to do the job nobody assigned you, and how to walk away from something before you start to hate it.

WHAT'S COVERED

— What an intrusive thought actually is, and how it differs from the OCD everyone thinks they know

— Why the relief came from being diagnosed, not from being cured

— Why nerves only ever turn up when something matters

— The difference between athletes who deliver on the day and the ones who don't

— “Depth of medal”: why the podium was never the thing being chased

— Changing how athletes are paid in New Zealand

— Doing the work nobody asked you to do

— Retiring before the love ran out

Hunger & Heart is a podcast about the intersection of wild ambition and fierce compassion, hosted by Kaila Colbin. Find out more at Hunger & Heart with Kaila Colbin | Raw Conversations with sports legends