HONG KONG’S HAUGHEY NEARLY QUIT AFTER TOKYO OLYMPICS BECAUSE SHE FEARED THAT WAS HER PEAK
- The swim star will dive into her third Olympics having added four world titles since her historic silver medals in Tokyo
Hong Kong's Siobhan Haughey has revealed she considered retiring after the Tokyo Olympics, but decided to continue swimming after realising she could still go on to conquer the world.
The double Olympic silver medallist said that after the Games in 2021 she thought she had reached her peak, and did not want to head into another one if she could not swim faster.
But this month, the 26-year-old will dive into her third Olympics having added four world titles, a world record and six Asian Games medals to her trophy cabinet since that historic achievement.
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"Honestly, after Tokyo, I thought I was done with swimming. I thought of retiring," Haughey told the Post from her training camp in Slovakia. "I was worried that Tokyo was my peak, and I couldn't improve or I couldn't go any faster."
Haughey also said before she became the first Hong Kong swimmer to win an Olympic medal, she did not think the sport she loved would be a long-term career.
"It just felt very normal that I should be done after Tokyo," Haughey said. "I'd been swimming for so long and [thought] maybe after that, I'll go back to school or find a job somewhere.
"But then, Tokyo happened and I did really well."
Haughey continued swimming but did not make a decision on competing in Paris until 12 months after she won silver in both the 100 and 200 metres freestyle in 2021.
"I was like, 'maybe there's still more in me', but I didn't commit to going all the way to the Paris Olympics until maybe a year after Tokyo," Haughey added. "I wanted to make sure that if I committed to going to Paris, there's more in me that I can demonstrate, more in me that I want to show and that I can keep improving."
Haughey said it was after she began training with coach Tom Rushton in 2021 that her lifestyle changed and she realised swimming was not something she could move on from.
"We approach training differently, where instead of just training in Hong Kong, we travel around the world to different places, see the world, go to different swim meets," she said. "I love my lifestyle right now so much that it's hard to give it up."
Haughey won short course world titles in 2021 and 2022 before this year adding her first world crown in a long course 50-metre pool, the size used in the Olympics.
However, despite seeing the benefit of Rushton's input, Haughey said she could never imagine stepping into a coaching role.
"Absolutely not ... I could never do his job, not even close," she said. "He's an amazing coach.
"I keep telling him, 'Tom I think you're a great coach, I don't tell you this enough, but I think you're amazing.' He cares a lot about us as swimmers, but more importantly, he cares about us as humans as well."
Rushton also coaches Hong Kong's Adam Chillingworth and two-time Olympian Camille Cheng Lily-mei.
As for when Haughey will step away from the sport she has been involved in since she was four years old, the swimming sensation is not thinking about that yet.
"I don't know how much longer I'll keep swimming, but at least that's a 'future me' problem - right now we have the Olympics to worry about," she said.
Haughey said she was putting in more work than before her exploits three years ago and looking to innovate to get even better.
"I trained really hard in Tokyo, but before the Paris Olympics I'm swimming more, I'm doing more, I'm putting more work in at the pool and outside of the pool," she said.
"I'm doing extra stuff to help with my recovery, my diet, extra training and extra everything because I want to make sure that if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it right.
"Once you meet a certain elite level, it's even harder to keep improving and to keep getting better.
"I just want to make sure I find that one per cent in everything that I do so that I can find different ways to improve. I think if you want to be one of the best, you have to do things that no one else has done."
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This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com), the leading news media reporting on China and Asia.
Copyright (c) 2024. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
2024-07-02T23:54:44Z dg43tfdfdgfd
