The one question Paris Olympic athletes refuse to answer

As Olympic athletes bask in their achievements in Paris, there is one key question they can’t stand to hear from journalists.

Kaylee McKeown and Simone Biles. Photos: Getty Images

A wide variety of athletes at this year’s Olympic Games, including some of the top-shelf, headline acts, are exhausted.

The fact that these Paris Games came around quicker than any other time in history due to the Covid-delayed 2021 edition in Tokyo certainly hasn’t helped.

And it means there is one question competitors in 2024 are loath to answer.

Namely, what are they planning to do next?

It might seem a fair, relatively innocuous question on the outside from journalists attempting to learn the next move for these world beaters.

But it is one that has been met with a straight bat, even at times contempt, from athletes trying to bask in this moment from a whirlwind, unprecedented three-year Olympic cycle.

Kaylee McKeown and Simone Biles. Photos: Getty Images

“I hate being asked this question because I’m just here right now,” Australian golden girl Kaylee McKeown replied when asked about her moves towards Los Angeles in 2028.

“I just want to enjoy my moment, enjoy what I’ve done.

“I don’t want to think about what I’m going to be doing in the next four years.

“It’s already just so draining having constantly been asked that question. So I’m going to give you the answer again, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I probably won’t until January, February next year.”

Apart from the World War enforced cancellations of Olympics in 1916, 1940 and 1944, the Games have rigidly stuck to the four-year cycle up until the delay of the 2020 schedule in Japan.

It gives athletes and their coaches an exact timeframe to plan for training blocks, perform in any pre-Olympic competitions and qualifiers and then taper ahead of the tournament that will often define their careers.

Please don’t ask me again. (Photo by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images)

It is an arduous, gruelling four-year slog that has proven particularly tough for some of Australia’s greatest swimmers, including Kieren Perkins and Ian Thorpe.

Distance great Perkins has detailed a panic attack that nearly derailed his legendary 1500m triumph from lane 8 at the 1996 Olympics that followed his victory in the same event in 1992.

Thorpe in particular has spoken of his battles recovering from the ridiculous highs of the Sydney Games, when he became a worldwide phenomenon as a teenager.

The Thorpedo backed that up with a massive gold medal haul at the 2001 world championships, but the pressure and some mental health issues impacted his preparations for Athens in 2004 and he was retired by 2006 at the age of just 24.

US gymnastics queen Simone Biles, who has also had high-profile mental health issues that led to her walking away during the Tokyo Games before her stunning comeback in Paris, has also pleaded this week for that one dreaded question to stop.

Kieren Perkins had his battles. (Photo by Bob Martin/Getty Images)

As did Ian Thorpe. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images)

“You guys really gotta stop asking athletes what’s next after they win a medal at the Olympics,” the 10-time Olympic medallist wrote on X.

“Let us soak up the moment we’ve worked our whole lives for.”

After a fan jokingly asked what was next after winning her third gold medal in Paris, she replied: “Babysitting the medal.”

There are strong rumours the 27-year-old could retire after Paris – which is her third Olympic Games campaign.

Biles has won seven gold, one silver and two bronze medals across Rio, Tokyo and Paris and is widely considered the greatest gymnast of all time.

However, she has hinted at the prospect of pushing on to appear at a home Games at LA 2028.

“The next Olympics is at home. So you just never know,” she said.

“But I am getting really old.”

And like many of her fellow competitors, really tired of that one question.