‘I’m broken, guys’: Liz Cambage’s raw revelations about Olympics withdrawal

Liz Cambage has revealed the confronting toll of Covid and mental health issues that convinced her to pull out of the Olympics.

Liz Cambage has opened up on her withdrawal from the Tokyo Olympics, revealing how significant her mental health concerns were and the impact they had on her life.

The Aussie basketball star was making headlines for all the wrong reasons leading up to the Games. She was involved in a physical and verbal altercation with the Nigerian women’s team during a scrimmage in Las Vegas and reportedly breached the Opals’ bio-secure bubble, leading to Basketball Australia opening an investigation into her behaviour.

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Cambage pulled out of the Olympics, citing mental health issues, and speaking on HBO’s The Shop: Uninterrupted, the 30-year-old spoke about just how dire her personal situation was.

“The Olympics is Everest for every athlete,” Cambage said. “It was about to be my third, it was meant to be the one. Like, every Olympics is the one, Australia’s gonna get a gold medal. And I’m like, ‘I’m broken, guys’.

“I’m halfway through a WNBA season, I’ve been dealing with health issues, I’ve been having panic attacks and vomiting during WNBA games.

“My stress has been on a totally different level this year.

“I really struggled with Covid last year. I was on pain killers, I’m on the Xanax again, and it’s like, ‘For what?’

“I can’t break myself.

“End of 2016, I ended up on suicide watch after the Rio Olympics.”

Cambage withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics due to mental health reasons. Picture: Brendan Radke

Cambage previously opened up on her withdrawal from the Olympics on her Instagram account, where she said her exit was “literally one of the hardest decisions” of her life.

“But it had been coming,” Cambage said. “I’ve been having breakdowns in the carpark at Whole Foods. Non-stop panic attacks. Hyperventilating — at the thought of going into one of the most high-pressure situations, that is already in a bubble.”

The Aussies’ campaign in Tokyo was a trainwreck. They won just one game from four, crashing out to the US in the quarter-finals as the Opals were kept to their lowest score since the Sydney Olympics 21 years ago.

Opals players revealed afterwards just how big a toll the Cambage saga took on the team, saying adjusting to a new style of play without her proved too tough an ask.

“It was really hard,” Marianna Tolo said. “Especially being so close to the Olympics, we didn’t have much time to adjust.

“I think that was the biggest thing. We’re used to playing with her and playing a certain way and then finding our feet after that didn’t feel as comfortable.”

Leilani Mitchell added: “We didn’t have a good preparation.

“Just with the drama and things that were happening leading into it and obviously Liz, who is arguably the best post player in the world, all of a sudden she’s not here with us where we’ve built our system around her.

“Obviously it was a lot of adjusting we had to make in a few days, and it didn’t really work out for us.”

Coach Sandy Brondello also weighed in, saying losing Cambage “wasn’t easy”.

“Liz, she’s one of the best players in the world,” Brondello said. “We took a big player out, and we’ve just got to find the best way that we can play and learn from every experience we have moving forward.”

Cambage said she was on suicide watch after the Rio Olympics in 2016. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)