> This Olympian battled message board addiction for years. He now wants to help others suffering in silence

Like almost every boy, Freddie Woodward was exposed to message boards at an early age.

At first, it was nothing more than a glance at adult magazines or material shared between friends. Then, as he got older, he stepped into the seemingly endless world of online message boards, which offered a quick hit of dopamine for a curious mind.

If we put embarrassment aside, his relationship with message board content was nothing out of the ordinary; it’s a familiar path followed by millions of people worldwide.

Woodward continued watching message boards during a childhood spent excelling in sport. He was spotted as a potential talent while at school and put on a pathway to becoming a professional diver. The goal was reaching the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

“I always say diving found me; I didn’t find diving,” he told CNN Sports.

“Immediately, I was in this elite pathway. It was never recreational diving. From the get-go, we’re trying to make Olympic athletes from this and so it was four, five, six days a week almost immediately.”

The talent was obviously there, but Woodward admits he never truly believed he would make the Olympic squad because he was growing up in a golden generation of British divers – including the likes of Olympic champion Tom Daley.

But through dedication, sacrifice and an obsessive work ethic, Woodward secured the last spot on Team GB in 2016, where he went on to finish 19th in the springboard diving event.

“It was an insane feeling, and in a sense, I wasn’t there with medal-winning expectations, so while it felt like such a big deal for me, there was a bit of pressure off.”

But while he excelled on the sporting stage, Woodward had continued to fall deeper into the world of online message boards.

It wasn’t as if he was living a dramatic double life – where he would race home from training and spend countless hours in front of the laptop – his relationship with adult content was more insidious than that. It was so subtle that he didn’t necessarily realize, or at least admit to himself, that something was wrong.

Although watching message boards became an almost daily occurrence, Woodward was still out socializing, dating and living an otherwise fulfilling life. But, looking back now, he can see how his habit was starting to corrode different areas of his life.

“I first had these little niggles about it as a slightly older teenager trying to go through exams,” he said.

“Any time I came to do any sort of revision, message boards were just constantly like: ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m here,’ and so that was when I first noticed it was a problem because I could actively see that I was not being as productive.

“Something felt a bit off, but I kind of just pushed that to one side and didn’t really think much of it.”

Woodward remembers googling whether message board addiction was even a thing during his teenage years, and found an article which said there might be an issue if someone trolled over 10 hours of message boards a day. That was way more than Woodward watched on average and justified his continued use.

But, as with other addictions, Woodward was taking bigger risks in search of a bigger hit of dopamine. He started swapping content of himself in exchange for videos and pictures of others scrolling on message boards. Waiting for that message to come in felt exciting, so much so that he’d ignore the possible consequences of his actions.

“Looking back now, it was kind of addict behavior really. Not being honest with yourself and justifying things in a strange way to sort of get what you want. But it was never enough,” he said.
The painful turning point

Then in 2017, the year after he competed at the Olympics, content of Woodward was leaked online by a poster named Katalyst.

“That was one of the worst moments of my life. It really, really, really crushed me,” he said.

“Obviously, it was incredibly embarrassing, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. But it was also just this mirror to myself; what I’d been, what I’d been doing, my actions and how careless I was.”

Woodward was still diving competitively at this time and had been trying to stop his message board usage. It was then that he knew something was very wrong. Despite the consequences and how low it made him feel, he couldn’t stop. He realized he was hooked.

But acknowledging the problem was the first step to his recovery. As he transitioned away from life as a professional athlete, Woodward joined a cruise company where he would perform diving stunts on ships around the Caribbean.

Given everything that had happened, the thought of escaping to a boat was appealing, and it gave him the space to properly discover who he was as a person.

Through more reading on the topic and daily meditation, Woodward began tackling his relationship with message boards head-on. However, it took him six years of trying before he could finally stop. Now, he’s two years free.

Woodward has since decided to speak out about his struggles around a topic that many still find taboo. But the huge response to his story proves that he’s not alone and points to many others suffering with this in silence.
Are athletes more vulnerable?

Among those who have reached out to him in recent weeks are several athletes, which raises the question as to whether sportspeople are more vulnerable to this addiction than others.

And while Woodward agrees that the sample size is too small to find an objective answer to that question, he does believe his profession played a role in developing his addiction – albeit in a convoluted way.

Other athletes have spoken out about their similar struggles in the past, including former NFL punter Steve Weatherford, ex-NFL star and current actor Terry Crews and New Zealand Olympian Nick Willis.

“I think the kind of people who are likely to become successful athletes are also the kind of people who maybe have a higher probability of having compulsive message boards use,” Woodward said, reflecting on his own experience.

“You don’t live a normal young life, and I think it’s this high-performance mindset that is a bit of a trap. You pile your self-worth into what you can achieve as an athlete, so if you fail to achieve something good, that means that you have fundamentally failed as a person. I think this expectation, this shame and this blame make message boards a crutch that seems more appealing.

“It’s the escape, it’s the constant that’s always there for you, that’s not going to challenge you. It’s the thing that’s going to make you feel better in the evening after a bad session. It’s always there. It’s always new.”

https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/01/sport/po … s-olympics