The tallest fall first
By Tara Carrigan
In a field of poppies, one flower inevitably grows taller than the others, standing out against the red backdrop. Its height catches the eye, but with that visibility comes greater exposure - making it more vulnerable to the forces that seek to cut it down.
Take David Beckham, for example. It may seem odd to compare one of the greatest English footballers ever to a flower, but the idea holds true.
England faced rivals Argentina in the 1998 World Cup, round of 16. The match seemed destined for extra time, with the score tied at two goals. But, in a pivotal moment, David Beckham was issued a red card and sent off after kicking at Argentinian midfielder Diego Simeone, who had just fouled him. Without one of their best free-kick takers, England would go on to lose the match in a penalty shootout.
Beckham was relentlessly vilified, shouldering the total weight of blame for England’s loss which knocked them out of the World Cup. Tabloid headlines branded him ‘childish’, ‘disgraceful’, and ‘stupid’, with one newspaper publishing a dartboard with Beckham’s face as the bullseye on the front page. From fans, it was undeniably worse - death threats, bullets in the mail, and a Beckham doll hanged outside a pub in London.
The fallout the then 23-year-old faced was unprecedented.
Although this marked an extreme moment in his career, the scrutiny Beckham endured went beyond his performance on the pitch. He became a magnet for criticism, not just for his mistakes in matches but for everything from his hairstyles to his off-field appearances and lifestyle choices. Every personal or professional decision invited public judgment, making him a target for sporting and cultural commentary.
This experience didn’t have a name during that time of his career. It wasn’t recognised as a problem; instead, it was accepted and even justified.
Now, it is a phenomenon known as tall poppy syndrome.
The name comes from the process of cutting down flowers that grow taller to match the height of the rest of the field. Individuals experience criticism, resentment or undermining of successes that ‘cut them down’ after they’ve achieved success. This can appear in many forms, such as minimising achievements, receiving dismissive remarks, or enduring intense character scrutiny.
David Beckham’s experience was tall poppy syndrome on the grandest stage, but the effects of this phenomenon extend beyond professional athletes; it influences junior players, local sporting clubs, parents, and, most importantly, society.
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Women of Influence+, a North American organisation offering solutions for workplace gender equality, conducted the first international study of its kind into tall poppy syndrome, exposing its impact in the workplace.
The study, which surveyed more than 4500 women across 103 countries, highlighted tall poppy syndrome experiences are not limited to one region or culture. Instead, it is a global issue that reflects deeper cultural and societal biases, negatively impacting victims’ mental wellness and ambition.
Chief Executive Officer Dr Rumeet Billan, who spearheaded the study, says tall poppy syndrome results from others feeling discomfort around an individual’s success, so much so it fuels negative responses.
“Tall poppy syndrome occurs when individuals, particularly women, are criticised, resented, or undermined because of their ambition or success,” she says.
“Some people, consciously or not, feel threatened by another person’s ambition and success.”
“Almost 90 per cent of the women we surveyed HAD experienced some form of tall poppy syndrome during their careers.”
Dr Billan – recognised as one of Canada’s Top 10 Power Women in 2020 - has experienced Tall Poppy Syndrome throughout her career, initially affecting her. However, she has since learned to identify it for what it is, empowering her to separate herself from the actions and comments of others. (Image: Supplied/Women of Influence+)
Dr Billan describes the study’s findings as “eye-opening”, revealing nearly all women surveyed had experienced tall poppy syndrome in the workplace and felt its effects firsthand.
“Almost 90 per cent of the women we surveyed had experienced some form of tall poppy syndrome during their careers,” she says.
“This took a serious toll on their wellbeing — 73.8 per cent said tall poppy syndrome negatively impacted their mental wellness, and 66.2 per cent cited lower self-confidence.
“The emotional toll is compounded by feelings of isolation and burnout [as tall poppy syndrome] creates an environment where ambition is stifled, and women hold back from reaching their full potential.”
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The study also revealed women are disproportionately impacted by tall poppy syndrome and are often scrutinised much more heavily for being “too confident” or “too ambitious”.
There is no denying Australia is a nation that excels at cutting down its champions, and our female athletes have borne the brunt.
During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Australia was not short of hometown heroes - the nation’s athletic team delivered stellar performances, and the country proudly celebrated their success. But for teams like the Matildas and Aussie Sevens, even cult-hero breakdancer RayGun, simply making it to the Olympics was not enough, they were expected to win. When they fell short of those lofty expectations, public praise quickly turned to harsh criticism.
A post from a major sports media organisation echoed this sentiment. Unless you win gold or exceed expectations - whatever your achievements might be - they will be minimised.
An Australian sports media organisation shared this Olympic performance report card on Instagram but quickly deleted it after facing heavy criticism in the comments. The organisation has been kept anonymous. (Image: Instagram/[SportsMediaOrganisation])
Athletes are especially prone to experiencing tall poppy syndrome. Their visibility in the media not only brings intense public scrutiny but also draws heightened attention to their personal and professional lives.
Although their achievements can be celebrated, they often become targets of criticism, making it hard to navigate the line between success and society’s expectations. The pressure to perform, coupled with constant media attention, can intensify tall poppy syndrome’s damaging effects.
Australian Olympic swimmer Susie O’Neill is no stranger to the pressures of being a professional athlete, having won her Olympic medal at 18. While the pressure to perform was intense, Susie acknowledges today’s athletes face an even more challenging landscape where social media amplifies public criticism and magnifies every misstep.
Reflecting on her career, O’Neill says her expectations were already immense at the time of her career, even without the added gaze of social media.
“It was different back then because there was no social media,” she says.
“It was just newspapers, so you could block it out by not reading them.
“The hardest time for me was leading up to the Sydney Olympics because it was in Sydney, and everyone was talking about it, and because I won in 96’ I was quite well known then, so when I went out, people would talk to me about it.
“That was the main time I felt the pressure to win because people would say, ‘I can’t wait to see you win a gold medal’, ‘I bought tickets to your gold medal’, but I think it would be a lot harder these days with social media.”
Queensland University of Technology’s Sport and Exercise Psychologist Gene Moyle says tall poppy syndrome is a “double-edged sword”. This is because athletes are forced to find a balance between the expectations of being a professional athlete, their personal lives, and public attention.
“Elite athletes and performers are people, and they have relationships, financial pressures, and other considerations, not just their sport aspects,” she says.
“Very quickly, people are happy to jump on that bandwagon of dragging people down because it makes them feel better, so [it can] be really difficult when you are such a high-profile person; people on the street can be saying things, and you’re having to walk past and ignore it.
“That is the challenge where it can begin to impact or intrude upon your day-to-day life not just in your sporting life.” ​
Queensland University of Technology’s Sport and Exercise Psychologist, Gene Moyle, emphasises the importance of athletes developing mental resilience, enabling them to “bounce back” when faced with challenging situations. (Image: Tara Carrigan)
While criticism from the media and fans can motivate athletes to perform better, it can also foster negative thought patterns, potentially leading to challenges like performance anxiety.
In sport, performance anxiety happens when athletes feel they may not have the ability to perform well in competitive situations. This causes a set of chemical reactions in the brain, increasing anxiety levels within the body and prompting an adrenaline response.
Anxiety, a ‘normal’ response to stressors, is essential for an athlete to perform effectively. Still, when an athlete begins to experience too much anxiety or not enough of it, performance deteriorates.
Too much stress can manifest into physical symptoms such as an increased heart rate, dry mouth, trembling hands, sweating or feeling sick. For example, if an athlete’s breathing becomes shallow, the amount of oxygen travelling through their body decreases. Because of this, the muscles can become tense, and blood flow is restricted to the main muscle groups. This physically impacts a person’s ability to perform and can lead to mental blockages like ‘choking’ or stage fright.
However, the impact of performance anxiety exceeds just physical or mental effects. Poor performances and failure to deliver results lead to scrutiny from fans and growing pressure on athletes. This can affect job security, mental wellbeing, and health, creating a harmful cycle where external pressures lead to performance anxiety, hindering effectiveness and generating even more pressure.
This is why sports and exercise psychologists emphasise the importance of athletes developing mental resilience and positive psychological habits during their careers. To help reduce performance anxiety and better manage external pressures limiting the potential impact on their professional and personal lives.
Focusing on winning and external criticism can reinforce negative mindsets, increasing pressure and performance anxiety. Instead, athletes would benefit from learning how to reframe their thinking so they can minimise external ‘noise’ and concentrate on their own processes, thoughts, and feelings, Moyle says.
“If we’re considering this from a neuroscience perspective, there is power around how I start to think in a particular way,” she says.
“What that means is that when I think a particular way, I’m selecting a certain neural pathway that I’m sending information through and consequently reinforcing that pathway.
“As a result, I’m reinforcing that particular thought process.
“It is up to me as to whether this pathway is one that will help or hinder my ability to work towards achieving my performance goal.
“If I only focus on the outcome, that is where increases in performance anxiety and worry and stress come in, which then can interplay physiologically in our body and impact upon our ability to train and perform well and then we kind of become stuck in a bit of a cycle.”
While O’Neill used the anxiety to fuel her performances, becoming one of Australia’s most decorated Olympians, many of her fellow competitors could not do the same. Witnessing it firsthand among her fellow competitors, she says she saw countless others buckle under the weight of expectations.
“I was a really nervous competitor; I’ve always been a very nervous person.
“But I would say, ‘well, it is ok to be nervous because it makes me swim faster’, so [I tried] to take the positives from it,” she says.
“I definitely saw [performance anxiety] with other swimmers, though.
“A lot of other swimmers could train really well but just couldn’t perform.”
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Susie O’Neill and her Australian Dolphins teammate Sam Riley (left) at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, where O’Neill claimed bronze in her Olympic debut. (Image: Supplied/Susie O’Neill)
O’Neill with her Australian Dolphin teammates at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, where she won her first gold medal. She says some of her teammates couldn't cope with the anxiety of performing at the Olympics. (Image: Supplied/Susie O’Neill)
An 18-year-old Susie O’neill shared the same sentiment as she does now, explaining in this interview how she uses anxiety to swim faster. (Image: Instagram/Susie O’Neill)
The drive to perform at the highest level is an inherent part of sports, fuelling the excitement for both athletes and fans. This ambition naturally brings anxiety. Today, more than ever, athletes face the challenge of managing performance anxiety alongside the mounting pressure from modern media.
With the rise of social media, growing media ownership within sports organisations, and fierce competition for television rights, the spotlight on athletes has never been more intense.
One national competition is focusing on the future of our younger generations so they are prepared to take proactive steps to manage these demands. The Australian Football League (AFL) is arming youth athletes with tools to handle pressure and manage the risk of mental health challenges.
The AFL Talent Pathways include a Talent Wellbeing Program that supports young athletes’ mental health and wellbeing. From more than 1,000 participants, only 80 to 90 will advance to the AFL or AFLW competitions, emphasising the need to develop skills and resources outside the sport. The other 10 per cent who will go on to play professionally need to develop skills to support their wellbeing and ensure they can handle the pressure of life in the limelight.
The AFL’s National Wellbeing Manager, Nicky Couston, says the program focuses on positive psychology to help young athletes develop positive mental health strategies to handle the pressures of professional sport and life.
“We run a wellbeing program - which is a primary prevention program - about teaching young people or youth athletes skills and strategies so they can look after their own wellbeing,” she says.
The program aims to decrease the number of athletes who need to access “the mental health system in Australia [and instead develop] problem-solving skills and some more strategies to take care of their mental health problems or challenges themselves and with the support of people around them”.
The program aims to balance ‘mental fitness’ with physical fitness, stressing the importance of prioritising mental health in the same way athletes prioritise their physical health, Couston says.
“The more that we can embed the wellbeing program into the business-as-usual happenings of high-performance sports, the more young people coming through will be able to equally prioritise their physical health and their mental health alongside each other,” she says.
“And then as they develop, those two things get equal time and equal attention so that we can have the most mentally fit and capable athletes possible transitioning into the AFL and AFLW but also the community having those skills.”
The AFL is strengthening these skills within the community through grassroots intervention. Their program, ‘Ahead of the Game’, which runs in partnership with Movember, is a mental health literacy and resilience program for young players, umpires, coaches, and parents involved in community football.
The program aims to connect local mental health services and community organisations, such as headspace, with AFL communities so that help-seeking pathways are highlighted and understood for young people and their support networks.
Investing in different local communities and strengthening the mental health resources available at a grassroots level will strengthen future players and communities, Couston says.
“We are starting to try and be part of the community-based intervention and solution using sport as the vehicle to help generate conversations about good mental health, help-seeking behaviour, how to look after each other,” she says.
“To try and ease the burden or play our role in easing a little bit of the burden on the mental health system and create positive communities.”
“The more that we can embed the wellbeing program into the business-as-usual happenings of high-performance sports, the more young people coming through will be able to equally prioritise their physical health and their mental health alongside each other.”
As future generations become better equipped to handle these pressures, there is hope for a more balanced approach to managing the demands of professional sports. It raises the question: if this approach was applied years ago, would athletes like David Beckham have been better prepared to navigate the intense spotlight of athletic achievement and cultural icon status?
Yet, the conversation surrounding tall poppy syndrome in sports goes beyond media attention. It speaks to the heart of how athletes, revered for their success, are expected to navigate the emotional and mental challenges that come with their careers.
While society’s obsession with athletes’ personal lives and every misstep is ever-present, the deeper issue is how athletes are often treated as commodities - valued more for their performance on the field than their mental wellbeing off it.
Athletes are more than just the sum of their victories and defeats; they are people, and their mental health is just as important as their physical performance. It is not about softening valid criticism but about reshaping the culture around sport to prioritise the wellbeing of those who inspire us more than profits. Only when we allow athletes to thrive on and off the field can we truly celebrate their success without cutting them down in the process.
In the end, whether in sports or in life, success is not about standing the tallest; it is about having room to grow without fear of being cut down.