David Gillick’s battle with depression

DAVID Gillick seemed to be a poster boy for life after professional sport.

From the outside, it looked as if he’d made a seamless move from athletics to fresh challenges.

And it looked as if he was thriving too.

Gillick won Celebrity Masterchef on RTE in 2013 and went on to write a best selling cook-book.

He returned to club GAA with Ballinteer St Johns, got plenty of media work, and was in demand with various sponsors.

Gillick got married to Charlotte Wickham in August, 2014 and they had their first child, Oscar, last February.

The Dubliner always had a ready smile and his engaging personality convinced many that he was surfing happily along.

But, underneath the surface, Gillick was struggling, struggling badly.

And his battle with depression came to a head late last year.

“I was questioning who I was, and what I was good at,’’ he said.

“I kept beating myself up, going ‘why did I go to America?’, ‘why did I leave Loughborough?’, telling myself I wouldn’t have got injured if I’d stayed put.

“I’d get awfully angry with myself. It’s very easy to put a brave face on and I was doing that every single day.

“I’d get frustrated with myself again. It was a vicious circle. I was doing quite a bit of work and spending a lot of time in the car. That was even worse because I had so much time to think.

“Things got really bad. Every day, I was getting up and…I just didn’t want to be around. I’d had enough. I struggled an awful lot.”

Eventually, the penny dropped and Gillick realised he needed help.

“Charlotte was pregnant at the time and I was thinking ‘I can’t bring a baby into this world when I’m not right myself’,’’ he said.

“I spoke to a friend of mine who’s suffered quite a lot himself and gone through various things.

“It was a Sunday and I hated Sundays, absolutely hated them. It was the start of a week and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

“There was one particular Sunday and I rang my mate and had a chat. We met up again and just talked. I unloaded all this stuff.

“It went from there. I went to a counsellor in December. I remember sitting in the counsellor’s room, thinking ‘I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t know how to kick this off’.

“But I stuck at it, went each week and began to take control a little bit, do the things I wanted to do, say no to the things I didn’t want to do.”

Gillick knows there is no miracle cure, that keeping depression at bay will take work.

“It’s something that I’m going to have to manage for the rest of my life, I’ve accepted that,’’ he said.

“But when I sat in that room…the counsellor said to me that if I was working nine to five, he’d have to put me on leave.

“I was thinking ‘fuck, are you serious, is it that bad?’ I realised ‘shit, something’s not right here’.

“I didn’t use to feel that way, and I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. I was just tired of it all.

“That word ‘depression’…you’re thinking ‘I’m not depressed, there’s people worse than me, I’m not depressed’.

“But the reality is…when you have mad thoughts going through your head that you know aren’t right, I was thinking ‘my wife is pregnant, I can’t be thinking this way’.

“When Oscar was born…it was difficult, it was very difficult and I was worried how I would react. For years, it was all about me and my athletics and my training, all that sort of stuff.

“To have suddenly someone else there who needs you, who can’t do anything without you…I was worried about how I’d react.

“For the first couple of weeks, it was hard but I was quietly surprised that I managed it.

“I’ve learned what the triggers are, what ticks me over, and it’s trying to manage those.”

Gillick was one of Ireland’s greatest athletes, winning two 400m European Indoor titles and finishing sixth at the World Championships in 2009.

But injuries cut short his career, and it looked as if his final race was last place at a meet in Moscow in June, 2012.

“I was very frustrated, very angry, angry with my body, angry with the decisions I had made,’’ he said.

“It was almost like the sport spat me out, rather than me going ‘I’ve had a great career, it’s time to walk away’.

“I honestly thought that I’d closed that door and would go on to the rest of my life.

“For a year or so, I didn’t watch athletics, I’d had enough of it, I didn’t want to be reminded of it.

“I thought I could move on but it was like missing a rib.

“It was like I’d broken a rib and it wasn’t growing back.”

But Gillick is making an attempt to regrow the rib, running his first 400m race in nearly four years in Italy last weekend, and he’ll race again in Belfast tomorrow.

“I went to the Leinster Open in February and ran a 200m race,’’ he said.

“It was really low key. While I was competitive when I ran — I ran 21.99 for that 200 — I just enjoyed it.

“Something that was always in my mind was, that if I had kids, I’d love them to see me run.

“Oscar was only two weeks’ old but he was there.

“Then, at Easter, I decided just to go back, that it could help, that there was a part of me missing.

“I’m not looking at Rio. I’m not looking at 4x400m relay or anything like that.

“I’m doing it for myself to get better again — physically and mentally healthy.

“I just want to get to a start-line with a smile on my face and get around in one piece. Be happy.”