Olympic figure skater Gracie Gold has revealed that she is undergoing treatment for anxiety, depression and an eating disorder while announcing that she has withdrawn from the Grand Prix series.
The 22-year-old, who was part of the bronze medal-winning U.S. figure skating team at the Sochi Games in Russia in 2014, announced on Friday she was dropping out of the top series for preparing for the Olympics.
‘It saddens me deeply to sit out this Grand Prix Series, but I know it is for the best,’ Gracie said in a statement to NBC Sports. ‘I am currently in treatment for depression, anxiety and an eating disorder. I will not have adequate training time to prepare and compete at the level that I want to.’
Getting help: Olympic figure skater Gracie Gold has revealed that she is undergoing treatment for anxiety, depression and an eating disorder. She is pictured in January 2017
Health first: The 22-year-old announced on Friday that she’s dropping out of the Grand Prix series because she ‘will not have adequate training time to prepare’ while seeking treatment
‘I would like to thank U.S. Figure Skating, my fans and my sponsors for their ongoing support,’ she added. ‘I also want to thank [coaches] Marina [Zoueva] and Oleg [Epstein] for standing beside me through this journey and most of all my family for their unconditional love.
Gracie previously dropped out of the Japan Open, an invitational team competition on October 7. She has now abandoned her two major international assignments in the Grand Prix series: Cup of China and Internationaux de France. Both of which take place in November.
With Olympic qualifying for the U.S. team set for early January, Gracie’s prospects for competing in the Pyeongchang Games are in jeopardy. However, she will still be eligible to compete at nationals even though she is skipping her Grand Prix assignments.
Last month, Gracie announced that she was taking time off from training for the 2018 Winter Games in order to ‘seek professional help’ after going through ‘struggles on and off the ice’.
Before the announcement, she had been actively training towards the next Winter Games, which are set to take place in Tokyo in February.
However, in a statement made on September 1, the competitive figure skater admitted that she would be ‘taking time off’ from her rigorous training schedule in order to deal with some undisclosed issues.
Putting her training on ice: Gracie revealed in September that she was taking time away from working towards the 2018 Winter Games to ‘seek professional help’
Health first: Although she did not specify what kind of treatment she would be undergoing at the time, she admitted that she has had some ‘issues on and off the ice’ recently
‘My passion for skating and training remains strong,’ Gracie told USA Today. ‘However, after recent struggles on and off the ice, I realize I need to seek some professional help and will be taking some time off while preparing for my Grand Prix assignments.
‘This time will help me become a stronger person, which I believe will be reflected in my skating performances as well.’
Although Gracie did not expand on what kind of professional help she would be seeking at the time, a source close to the athlete told Us Weekly that she has been going through a number of ‘personal issues’ in recent months, and her ‘health’ is her number one focus while she is seeking treatment.
‘[Gracie] has been dealing with a couple of issues in her personal life and needs to take a step away and focus on her health,’ the source revealed.
‘Her family and friends are so proud of her for being so brave and facing these issues directly. Everyone is so happy that she is stepping away from skating to take care of herself. It takes a lot of courage.’
As reported by USA Today, it has not been an easy year for the two-time national champion, who has suffered an incredibly disappointing 2016/17 season.
Training time: The last time that Gracie was known to have been on the ice was on August 21, when she shared these images from a break during a session at the Broadmoor World Arena
Updates: The skater had previously been sharing updates with her followers as the Olympics gets ever nearer, counting down to the Games in several posts
Accomplishment: Gracie was part of the bronze medal-winning U.S. figure skating team at the Sochi Games in Russian in 2014
Gracie finished in a less-than-impressive sixth place at the national championships in January, a result which saw her miss out on a spot at the world championships for the first time in five years.
Meanwhile Gracie’s friend and Olympic teammate Ashley Wagner, 26, ended up in second place, just behind 18-year-old Karen Chen, who went on to finish fourth at the world championships.
Gracie’s second teammate from the Winter Games, Polina Edmunds, now 19, was also forced to take a break from training back in November 2016, when she discovered a fracture on the navicular bone in her foot.
She returned to the ice in March 2017, and is currently thought to be training for a spot on the 2018 Olympic team.
Gracie was thought to have been training just a few weeks before she announced she was taking a break. On August 21, she posted an Instagram image of herself and her hairstylist doing a fun ‘Polaroid photo shoot’ in between training sessions at the Broadmoor World Arena in Colorado.
The figure skater, who was wearing her Team USA sweater in the images, tagged U.S. Figure Skating in the post, which is the last one featured on her Instagram page.
Champion: Gracie has won two US championships, and came fourth in the individual competition at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi (pictured)
Disappointment: She looked incredibly shaky at this year’s national championships, finishing in sixth, a result which was her miss the world championships for the first time in five years
She previously shared her aim to compete at the next Olympics, counting down to the sporting event in various Instagram posts and checking in occasionally at her training sessions.
This is not the first time that Gracie has opened up publicly about her struggles with mental health.
In October 2016, following a disappointing performance at Skate America, Gracie admitted that she had been struggling with her weight and the pressure to stay in shape during training, suggesting that both her ‘physical and mental shape’ had been responsible for her shaky programs.
‘We just need to adjust my physical shape and mental shape to see if the program can be salvaged for the rest of the year,’ she said after the competition, before adding: ‘You don’t often see — there aren’t that many — you just don’t see overweight figure skaters for a reason.
‘It’s just something I’ve struggled with this whole year and in previous seasons. It’s just difficult when you’re trying to do the difficult triple jumps.
‘It’s something that I am addressing but it’s obviously not where it should be for this caliber of competition…. It’s a lean body sport and it’s just not what I have currently…’