
Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle - danso
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/olympic-medal-winning-cyclist-rebecca-twigg-is-homeless-in-seattle/
======
jawns
Former editor here.

This is a really interesting story, but if I were Greenstone's editor I would
feel really conflicted about running it.

There's the elephant in the room -- mental health. What did the reporter get
on record? "She did not want to discuss mental health but feels it should be
treated more seriously in Washington."

Then there's her family. What did the reporter get on record? "Her immediate
family in the Seattle area, including her 18-year-old daughter, declined
interviews for this story."

So now you have to weave a tale while dancing around the fact that she's
likely got mental health issues that she won't talk about, and you've got
important people in her life who also don't want to talk.

I'm not saying the story is bad as-is. It's fascinating.

But it feels like there's a lot missing.

~~~
docker_up
Agreed. Those were the things that I spotted instantly. The first thing when
you think of for homeless people is mental health. You don't have to be full-
on crazy to have mental health issues that bring you down the wrong path of
bad decision-making. The fact the family doesn't want to talk, that she was
asked to leave by her parents, that she kept losing her job, these all speak
volumes.

It's terrible, but it happens: I've learned anyone can suffer from mental
health problems. I have a decades-old friend who was gifted and brilliant. He
succumbed to schizophrenia in his 30s, lost his job as a patent lawyer and
broke off his engagement to his lovely fiance, and started murmuring about
evil. He stopped answering my calls and moved around so much I have no idea
where he is now, or if he's even still alive.

~~~
mindslight
Because abstracting one person's story to "mental health" is extremely
dehumanizing. In fact, the article does address the topic head on:

> _" What (Twigg) has is a great trait," Thompson said. "Unless you get into
> the workforce."_

The truth is that personality traits aren't really considered _disorders_
until they affect your ability to lead a normal life, the chief aspect being
to "hold down a job".

So we lauded her when these traits helped her be exceptional in her field, but
now that she's used that up and didn't pivot it into some more lasting form of
wealth, she's left to the shitty support structure.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
It not just "hold down a job".

When your own family can't stand being around you, I would say that qualifies
as a serious problem.

~~~
mindslight
Yes, I did acknowledge it was only one metric. There are many people who can't
stand their families and/or vice versa, yet if they were characterized as
mentally ill it would effectively nullify the term. So this is also
subjectively condemning personality traits that are celebrated in other
contexts, veiled with impartiality.

And while this is a contributing factor to her actual situation (if she were
on better terms with her family, that would be another support structure),
that doesn't really have a bearing on what I said in the USian individualist
paradigm.

------
aladinator
Great story.

I kind of agree with many others here that it sounds like a mental health
issue. But I also think that the story is more complicated than that.

We shouldn't neglect the impact on the brain a professional sports career has.
I've seen it many times. The amount of sacrifice and energy put into something
like this leads to a very unbalanced lifestyle, which is usually encouraged
from all sides (parents, coaches, friends). Most often, the only positive
emotion athletes experience is that joy of achieving a goal, and this quickly
starts becoming an addiction. Especially in sports where not a lot of money is
involved, passion and perseverance play a huge role in personal motivation and
these sports usually attract athletes that put everything on hold in their
life for their minute in the spotlight.

Unfortunately, only a minor fraction of athletes ends their career by choice.
Usually, lack of success or injuries tend to force people to retire with
unfinished business. This hits the "addicted" athlete very hard, and in an
environment where it is generally not advisable to show weakness, can lead to
severe mental health issues quickly.

Speaking from personal experience, life is pretty dull after being forced to
retire. I fell into a deep existential crisis, mostly because the thing that
was responsible for most of the joy in my life wasn't even remotely fun
anymore, even as a simple hobby. The fact that I knew I wasn't on top of my
game anymore, and I am not investing 100% of my energy into improving made it
a pretty dull experience. On top of that, most of my social environment was
still connected to that sport, so I wasn't really able to walk away and focus
entirely on something different. And even worse, everything else I tried felt
meaningless, I felt like it wasn't worth it if I didn't invest 100% of my
energy into something I was passionate about. For me, nothing compares to the
joy of pursuing a passion and putting everything I have into it.

Source: myself and plenty of my friends and competitors. And yes, I got some
help and things are much better now.

~~~
Balgair
Arguably the most accomplished athlete ever, Michael Phelps, has struggled
with these same issues [0]. Today he is more upfront about his suicidal issues
and what strategies he uses to help with his mental health. Such issues are
incredibly personal, but there does seem to be some correlations with 'Black
Swan' people (per the Natalie Portman movie) and later term mental health.

[0] [https://www.menshealth.com/health/a24268441/michael-
phelps-d...](https://www.menshealth.com/health/a24268441/michael-phelps-
depression/)

If you need someone to talk with please call: 1-800-273-8255.

Alternatively, I'd love to talk with you (the reader of this sentence) as
well, Hacker to Hacker.

~~~
jniedrauer
I know that posting suicide hotline numbers seems like the right thing to do,
but it's generally not helpful. People who call these numbers run the real
risk of being detained against their will for extended periods of time while
running up large hospital bills, when they just needed someone to talk to.
Then there's the lack of statistical evidence that suicide hotline numbers
actually prevent suicides in the long run.

~~~
e12e
> lack of statistical evidence that suicide hotline numbers actually prevent
> suicides in the long run.

I'm not sure if you say what you mean; but that's not really their purpose as
I understand it? Prevent a suicide today, open the door to treatment tomorrow
- vs failing to prevent a suicide today, and there being no option for
treatment tomorrow?

~~~
DanBC
There's not much evidence that suicide hotlines prevent a death by suicide
today thus opening the door to treatment tomorrow.

There's even a suggestion that suicide helplines might normalise suicide, or
make it more real.
[https://twitter.com/ProfLAppleby/status/1110821429443026946](https://twitter.com/ProfLAppleby/status/1110821429443026946)

~~~
e12e
That's much more relevant criticism.

------
mothsonasloth
Great read.

I have a "free spirit" in my family, a really gifted man who just couldn't
settle. He's now in his 60s and does mosaics for people all around the UK.

He doesn't own a house and is constantly staying with friends and family. He
tried working in construction jobs and other things, settling with a family
and buying a house.

However after his divorce and other things he is most happy with his campervan
conversion and parking it on offroads from motorways.

I asked him once, "Uncle, why can't you stay in once place". To which he
replied, "Why do you have to stay in one place with brick walls?".

Another famous Olympian, Eddie the Eagle spent a few years homeless traveling
for winter qualifiers for the Olympics.

~~~
dpau
I don't think this story is about a "free spirit". Twigg was a determined
athlete who doggedly pursued her passion while she could and became the best
in her field. But her success in sports didn't translate over to another
career.

According to the article, Twigg has only been homeless for five years, and she
is currently 56 years old. Twigg wasn't really a "free spirit"\- She held down
jobs, had kids, and made a normal life for herself up until her 50's.

So I feel that this story is instead about an older tech worker who has aged
out of the workforce. As a 40-something developer who has already experienced
age discrimination as well as the realization that many of my skills are
becoming outdated, I feel for her. Without a nest-egg, many of us may very
well be in her situation in our 50's.

~~~
dondawest
Less of a “free spirit” than a “treatment resistant homeless person.” Social
workers know the type. She goes to pains to point out that she’s homeless by
choice.

~~~
dpau
If she's resistant, it seems to be out of a sense of empathy for other people
in her situation, rather than mental illness or some other issue:

>“I felt at one time that I couldn’t accept housing because there were all
these other people who need it”

>“The point is not so much that I need help, it’s that there are a bunch of
people who need help — 12,000 in this area, half a million in the country,”
Twigg said. “Help should be provided for everybody, not just a few.”

~~~
ohyes
Classifying empathy as a mental illness captures much of what’s wrong with
society. Similarly, being unable or unwilling to toil away at a low paying it
desk job may actually show some amount of sanity that the rest of us lack.

~~~
dondawest
Who the hell classified empathy as a mental illness?

------
thrwoawer234af
This is very interesting. I've always wondered about how tech jobs require
endless preening and showing-off for what are often not exactly jobs that
require a lot of intellectual ability.

"You want a job in ML ? Yes, learn these absurd frameworks, publish a few
papers in so-and-so conferences. Then we'll let you do some clickrate
optimization for our website. "

No wonder, tech in the US has a diversity problem. Not everyone wants to be
this way.

~~~
equalarrow
How is that a 'diversity' problem??

------
jplayer01
She sounds like a great person and I hope things work out for her. It's hard
to find the right context for her without painting her in a bad light. Some
people are eager to call her (or people like her) lazy, conveniently ignoring
the fact that nobody really _wants_ to live this way. Society as it is
designed now doesn't know what to do with people like her, so they're either
ignored or just given shelters and... That's it? Seems like a societal failing
on some level.

~~~
fulafel
Lazy people of course deserve housing too.

~~~
matt4077
The whole idea that somebody could be so lazy as to become homeless, without
any other issues, is somewhat absurd. Being homeless is terribly
uncomfortable. A truly lazy person would find it unbeatable.

~~~
abstractbarista
It seems natural to me - a reflection of harsh reality on this planet. You
work for yourself, or you perish. You see this in all living beings. We're
animals just like them, bound by the same harsh rules.

~~~
fulafel
Many anthropologists seem to think that a lot of hunter-gatherer populations
had a fairly laid back life in terms of hours worked per week. It seems
plausible to me that unnecessarily industrious tribes living in rainforest
could overtax their environment, for example.

------
majani
"Olympic medal winner" is like a golden ticket in the fitness trainer
industry. There's a lot of rich people who would be willing to pay over the
odds to be trained by her.

~~~
trabant00
She sounds like a person who would have a hard time fooling herself into
taking the money. There's little if any good a professional athlete can do for
regular person who wants to get/stay fit. She's good at taking health
compromises to the extreme in exchange for performance. The exact opposite of
what a regular person needs.

~~~
notahacker
The value of the personal trainer for the average person looking to get into
slightly better-than-average shape is dispensing advice along pretty well-
understood guidelines _and helping them overcome their self-discipline issues_
, which is where speaking with the authority of an Olympian adds value even
though the training regimes aren't going to be remotely similar.

Of course, she might want to stay well away from her past career for other
reasons, whether it's boredom, self-consciousness, frustration or a strong
desire to draw a line under it (FWIW I know an Olympic medallist who made
plenty of money from endorsements and speaking engagements and could probably
have had a media career but had absolutely no desire to do that _or_ become a
trainer/ambassador after his retirement, choosing to became a builder's
apprentice instead, because he liked the idea of building stuff rather than
because he needed the money)

~~~
maxxxxx
I knew a world class track athlete who also left the sport completely. To her
it was something that parents and coaches had forced on her so she got out as
soon as she could despite all the success.

------
angel_j
Homelessness is the tip of the housing iceberg. Right behind the homeless are
those who are a paycheck, or emergency, from losing everything. Behind them
are millions of paying out there earnings in high rent, forced to share
apartments to live where the job pays. Fronting it all are upper-middle class
people, foreign investors, and venture capital, buying up properties to rent
out.

The cause is not a lack of "affordable housing", it's a lack of housing,
period. What's not affordable are regulations and competing with real estate
capital. What's not affordable is spending most of your income on rent, and
this is hardly a choice for most people right now.

People will stare, and think, gosh this homeless situation is sad, inhumane,
drugs/mental, w/e, but meanwhile, the shortage of housing and the
affordability to create more is going to make it worse for everybody,
especially those who are stuck in the middle with increasing rents and
stagnant wages.

~~~
equalarrow
"What's not affordable is spending most of your income on rent, and this is
hardly a choice for most people right now."

Not a choice? Don't you enter into a rental agreement via choice? I've never
met anyone who's said they were forced to rent some place.

I don't necessarily disagree with the housing shortage, but there's reasons
for that. Look at state, local laws and nimby's that pass and influence local
zoning restrictions. San Francisco is a perfect example of that process gone
awry.

Want affordable rent? Then you _can_ still choose not to live in one of the
areas that is anti-housing.

~~~
unethical_ban
I wish people didn't trivialize the struggle with moving from a metropolitan
area, as if leaving everything and everyone close to you is a simple,
rational, mathematical decision to save a few hundred a month on rent.

------
koonsolo
As a European, it always baffles me how normal it is in US to be homeless.
Seems like it can happen to anyone during their life. A bit of bad luck and
you're on the street.

In Europe, there are so many safety nets that nobody should end up homeless.
Some still do, but it's really a tiny minority compared to US.

This is also one of the most surprising things I saw, the first time I went to
the US: so many homeless people, everywhere. Even in small towns.

~~~
xtracto
Even reading the comments in here sheds very interesting light: People
discussing about why is the person homeless: Is it because of mental issues?
is it because of laziness? is it because of bad luck?

It doesn't matter! it should not matter. People should not be homeless, and
the different safety nets should be agnostic of the reasons (otherwise you are
catering only for the mental health issues, and you still have homeless drug
addicts, or homeless bad-luck people).

------
mtw
She won a medal which puts her at the top 1% but most athletes who go to
Olympics or international championships don't win any medals but nevertheless
have to through the same training and invest the same commitment. If she can't
make it, it makes you wonder what happens to the rest who also saw their
golden years pass by but without any medals or achievements to show off.

~~~
tasuki
Well, if you worked hard, yet never won an Olympic medal, settling for a
"boring" job might actually be easier.

~~~
heedlessly3
It just seems like if you can push yourself mentally and physically to be a
world champion, then a mediocre office job is exponentially easier.

~~~
projektir
Idk, I don't think these things are so linear.

I'm not sure what exactly is a "mediocre office job", but normal jobs require
a different set of skills and priorities. Athletics benefit from a very
singular focus, it's clear what you need to do and largely how to do it. If
you're not good enough, it's generally made very clear pretty fast. There's
often a huge network around you and lots of emotional reinforcement.

Normal living and normal jobs are not so. The big difference being that your
priorities are scattered and there's no clear item to focus on. Very easy to
miss things and make a mistake. Jobs are full off odd negotiations and office
politics and proving something is hard. It's not very clear where you are.

------
harias
>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the
solitary nature of programming troubled her.

I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of
programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?

~~~
wolfgke
> Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?

It is still more solitary than many other jobs.

On the other hand, I hate that it becomes more and more a group endeavor - I
would love if it stayed much more solitary as in former days.

~~~
mothsonasloth
Agreed, Pair Programming is over-hyped as well as this new "mobbing" concept.

It affects productivity and makes people who prefer to work by themselves
unhappy.

~~~
tapland
Doesn't have to be pair programming. Just having two employees next to
eachother working on different parts of the same project can make it a social
workplace. If you aren't into it the other person will probably get the hint
and not talk too much.

I guess this is the overtraining hampering growth I've heard about as a kid.
Being an olympic level athlete makes a lot of hormones to whack.

------
tw1010
"She took a break at age 26, and that year she grew an entire inch"

What's that again? I've never heard of anyone growing after the age of 18.

~~~
caymanjim
They make it sound like it was because she was burning fewer calories and had
some left over to grow, but I don't think it works that way. My uneducated
guess is that it's a posture thing; he spine probably stretched or relaxed in
some way after she stopped spending her entire waking life hunched over
pedaling.

~~~
alexsb92
While I'm not sure about this specific case, delayed growth due to intense
exercising is a thing for gymnasts.

[https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(00)70094-1/fulltext](https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476\(00\)70094-1/fulltext)

------
exabrial
> “Once you’ve done something that feels like you’re born to do it, it’s hard
> to find anything that’s that good of a fit,” Twigg says today. “Anything
> else that feels that way.”

If she has a mental health issue, she should seek care. But if you take the
above quote at face value (and likely out of context), then I would give her
this advice to start building her life:

"Flipping Burgers in not beneath your dignity" \- Charles J. Sykes

An entire generation has been romanticized that if you "do what you love"
you'll end up a billionaire. The complete opposite is true. It requires doing
thing you dislike, discipline, financial management, and focus on the correct
things.

~~~
jniedrauer
> An entire generation has been romanticized that if you "do what you love"
> you'll end up a billionaire. The complete opposite is true.

The implication that flipping burgers will make you a billionaire is patently
absurd. You should never feel ashamed about your work, but menial work in
$current_year actually leads to poverty and hunger because it doesn't pay a
living wage. An "entire generation" doesn't have illusions about how the world
works. The 2008 recession was more than sufficient to dispel that. They just
want food and shelter.

~~~
exabrial
That's a ridiculous exaggeration of my words. Flipping burgers will put a roof
over your head, buy you some food, and give you a small amount of savings.
From there you move up. Better education, better job, more savings.

~~~
jniedrauer
You said (paraphrased) "doing what you love will not make you a billionaire.
The opposite is true. You should go flip burgers." This can either mean "doing
what you love will make you poor. And also you should flip burgers" or "doing
things you don't like will make you a billionaire." It's possible I
misunderstood what you were saying, but whichever point you were trying to
make, it's a patronizing extension of the typical boomer "millennials are
entitled" refrain.

> Flipping burgers will put a roof over your head, buy you some food, and give
> you a small amount of savings.

None of these are true. I'm not sure when the last time you worked an entry
level job like this was, but they haven't paid anything close to a living wage
in a very long time.

~~~
exabrial
That's still an extreme exaggeration of my words. Your argument is pointless.

> they haven't paid anything close to a living wage in a very long time

That is definitely not true. One can eat a grocery store for a few bucks a
week. You can rent a place for $250-$500/mo in the vast majority of cities in
the country, excluding the cities where millennials are flocking to; take
Topeka, Kansas, or Fayetteville, Arkansas, or any number of small cities
scattered across the USA.

Like I said in my initial comment, it's totally possible to pull yourself out
of the situation, but one must forgo the flashy lifestyle of living in Seattle
and the like.

------
pnathan
Seattle is a rough place to try to jump into independent living. The entry
level to normal housing is pretty high.

I don't think there's a lot of onramps to doing that that don't involve years
of training.

Ms. Twigg is a very sad story, and I feel for her. Her story highlights the
complexity of US homelessness: not drug addiction, not simple job loss, not
simple mental health issues.

Athletes in general have an issue exiting the athletic world, I've noticed.
Where do you go when you leave the field and the lights are on for someone
else?

I hope Ms. Twigg gets the help she needs.

------
rmykhajliw
I suppose there's something strange with sport at all. Her story isn't unique,
just look here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_van_de_Leur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_van_de_Leur)

Amount of people in sports are much lower than in army, that's why we may not
hear their stories, but it remembers me a problem with veterans. The same
issue - it's hard for people people to adapt for a new life without extreme
load. I really don't know the right answer. Teach them since start life is not
only fighting, cycling, trainings ? there're something else external life ?
But it's hard when your couch pushes you to your limits& I don't know.

------
doe88
I'm feeling for her. Finding the right work is never easy but it seems
reconversion after pro-sport can be really tricky, especially for these sports
where it's hard to earn enough to make a living. From all the examples I read
through the years I got the impression that the least disrupting kind of
reconversion in these cases is have the luck to find a way to somehow stay in
your sport, trainer, or work in the federation or something like that, but of
course easier said than done, you're certainly not alone with this simple
idea, and of course I think it's even more difficult when you're a woman.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>and of course I think it's even more difficult when you're a woman. //

Would you mind explaining why? I'd imagine how difficult it is to move to the
coaching/administration level was more a function of the particular sport? Are
you thinking just about differences in the level of funding?

~~~
doe88
> Would you mind explaining why?

Not at all. Simple. Always (until now at least) a prejudice against women when
positions have limited numbers to fill. And of course, the whole area of sport
is biaised against women, for instance, for her sport there is still no real
_tour de france_ for women in cyclism, in 2019.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
[I'm not at all denying your hypothesis. Just wishing to probe the issue
further.]

When women are choosing their coaches do they exhibit the same sort of
choices, that you called prejudice? Maybe in general men are better at
coaching? Are you assuming it is prejudice, or is that demonstrable?

I wonder if sportsmen perceive that more successful sportsmen make better
coaches, so female sportsmen think that males are better because of the
monetary bias?

The bias in sport seems to be primarily biological. Your second clause doesn't
answer why it's harder for women already at the pinnacle of their sport to
move in to "retirement" posts (coach, admin, advocacy): besides prejudice do
you have any other hypotheses.

I imagine the travel involved is similar to being an itinerant salesman; if
there are self-selective pressures that differ by the sexes then I could see
similar proportions to that field.

~~~
doe88
Again a simple example. Track cycling always been more difficult for athletes
to make a living from, even for men. A lot of them either are integrated in
traditional pro-teams or shift to road pro-cycling after their accomplishments
on track. For instance Bradley Wiggins started on track then later won TdF. So
part of my point was saying when there is less opportunity to make something
like that (there is no true TdF for women, therefore less money, therefore
less opportunities to shift from track) then to me there is an obvious
difference between opportunities offered to women than men in track cycling.

~~~
parineum
Can women not participate in the tour de france?

------
readhn
mental health problem or not - it is ABSOLUTELY INSANE that a decorated
olympic champion, best in her class at the time, that represented this country
and won multiple medals has to now live on the streets.

This is what is wrong with America - we cant even take care of the very best
of our own (after they cant help themselves anymore) but are quick to point
out at other's people's/countries/nationalities problems.

------
magic_beans
Rebecca Twigg obviously has a mental health problem that contributed to her
path to homelessness. Why wasn't that discussed?

------
kevin_thibedeau
> Twigg got an associate degree in computer science and became a programmer
> for a seaweed-products company in San Diego.

She must be more experienced than most bootcamp grads. There must be jobs she
can do in Seattle.

------
heedlessly3
Andrew Yang will help her out

