I was always scared of water.
People think I'm joking because you're an Olympic champion
in the same thing you were scared of.
I really struggled to get my head up and breathe.
I hated the bath, I hated the shower.
For some reason, water was just something I was kind of allergic to.
There's no better feeling than being next to someone
and going head to head,
stroke for stroke.
I just, it gives me shivers just thinking about it.
When I'm coming down that last length
I just remember in Rio,
you come into that first stroke
I heard just a roar, like a roar.
Then I put my head down, I was like I can't hear anything...
roar.
Head down.
And then in between that roar I was like,
think of all the people that have supported you, who have got you this far.
All the people back home who are staying up in my hometown
and the country,
and coming back with this gold medal that we've been starved of for a very long time.
And, that was just, yeah I was gone.
As soon as I thought that I was like, no one's beating me here, just gone.
I touched the wall and I just closed my eyes like I just did.
Closed my eyes and I was like
I looked around and it said WR 57.13.
That's what sport is about.
You've done eight years of that choice and it's just paid off in that moment.
I'd say the biggest change was commercially,
you're in the limelight.
That's when it gets a little bit harder
because you don't want to make a mistake.
When you've got kids who are 10 years old and you see the passion they've got for the sport
and who they want to be,
you don't want to let anyone down.
It does weigh heavy, it does weigh heavy,
and I feel sorry for a lot of athletes out there
especially ones who are really, every single day in the limelight.
I call it the network of support, right.
So you've got your coach, you've got your manager,
you've got your best friends, you've got your friends,
and it is like a spider web. As you go in,
they're the people who hold you together
and that's who I talk to.
My coaches, we always have WhatsApp groups.
The one at the moment's called 'The Super Seven.'
'The Super Seven' is me and my six other training partners.
It's one place where we all come together and
kind of share that journey.
And it's always so good because once we've achieved that objective,
hopefully a World Record, hopefully an Olympic gold,
it's so good to go and look back at how you've changed,
how the people around you have changed.
It's nice to have kind of all that documented in a sense.
But the one non-negotiable for me is that that's for my eyes only
and making sure that no one else can see that.
It can be anything from personal life,
believe it or not, coaching sets are very valuable to a lot of people,
to family problems.
Because I have tough days, I have really tough days,
especially being a father who lives away from his son.
If those conversations ever leaked, I wouldn't be myself.
I wouldn't be able to kind of,
approach the people that I need in that moment.
So making sure that more than ever that it is encrypted
and they are secure,
that no one has a third eye on those is very important.
Sacrifice is a word that we use, if you don't want to do something.
I choose suffering because I choose to suffer.
I don't even think I could put into a tangible word
how much I've kind of suffered.
So you could be away from two months to eight weeks, nine weeks.
And it is hard. It's hard when you've got children.
To provide for him for the rest of his life,
I've got to do this 110 percent.
If I'm not giving 110 percent, my full body and my mind and my soul,
someone else is doing that.
And that is the hardest decision to make.
That's the biggest fight I've had in the last three years,
especially through Covid because I'm like,
I just want to have a bit of normality.
I want to be a normal person. I don't want to do this job anymore.
Because it just keeps taking from you.
I think if you have a coach, which is your friend,
but also can turn on that professionalism
and work together and challenge each other,
that's a, you know, a recipe for success.
I think I share a lot of my struggles with Mel.
Mel just gave that stimulus where it wasn't really just about swimming,
she always cared about the human behind the sport,
which I think a lot of coaches and a lot of people forget.
She goes right first things first you need a good education,
then you can be a good athlete.
So I did all my education stuff,
I said, if I win this, I think it was 2014 Commonwealth Games,
can I stop going college?
And shook hands on it,
I won it.
I was like, right that's it, I'm pulling out.
And then that was it, into 2016, I won obviously in the Olympics.
I kind of thought Tokyo was stolen from us a little bit with no crowd.
I believe in opening your arms and coming out into the arena and going:
"This is life or death for me."
That is how much I live it.
So it was bittersweet, bittersweet,
because you're always glad that it went ahead as well.
As soon as I touched that wall on the last race at The Olympics,
I was like: "I'm done."
Almost like I'm done, done.
I was burned out.
What Covid, going through that whole experience, training in my garden,
having no real stimulus and no real life.
You still have to train with nothing really to look forward to with no competition.
That cost me a lot.
That's why decompression is so important because
I love more than ever what I do now.
So I'm glad I wasn't done.
But I needed to take that force rest away from the sport,
do something different, did a bit of dancing,
wasn't too good at it.
It was very different. It was almost 'show-bizzy'.
What I was not used to at all.
Whatever you posted, whatever you said or commented, whatever you liked,
there is someone looking.
Everyone on this planet has a right to their private information
and what they do in their private life.
When that's threatened or under threat,
it's not a nice feeling.
Home is something I've put a lot of energy and a lot of time
to make a place where I feel most private, most secure.
It's really about my family and my son
and making sure that they feel safe,
they feel like home is home.
Because as soon as home doesn't feel like home,
that's when your whole life starts to feel a little bit on the rocks.
As an athlete, I know more than probably the average
that my body has got a link with this.
And if that chain is broken,
you're not going to be getting the best performance out of yourself.
After 2016 Olympics, it was kind of a void really in my life
because it was such a high
and I was like: "Oh, I've done it now."
Like, what do I do now?
You party a lot, you celebrate a lot.
You don't really know who you are in a sense, because I was young,
I was still 21.
Eventually you do find a path through that,
it takes a couple of months,
but you have to go through those lows.
And now I know that it's okay to be on the peak but it's also okay to look up at the mountain.
And aim for the peak.
So, you know, just start that steady climb down
and then go for the next one.
I think I'd want to be remembered as a good laugh,
someone who, you know, did serious things but wasn't that serious in a sense.
But someone who pushed the human body to the extreme limits,
the mind to the extreme limits.
But most important for me is a good father
and a good person.