Page 114 of Diving In
“They are. And to be completely honest, I don’t think I used to deal with them properly. My first Olympic Games were at sixteen, and I’ve done two more since then. My teammates are amazing, and I’ve had opportunities to travel to fantastic places, but eventually, I got to a point where I was no longer coping with the pressure. I’ve never really spoken about it, but I think it’s important to talkabout these things.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, and I freeze. Is he going to say what I think he is? Claire and Josh are silent beside me.
Sam talks to me about his mental health, and I know he’s discussed it with our friends. But he’s never spoken about it publicly. Especially not on national television. I know that he wants to be an advocate, and that he donated some of his winnings from the last meet to a mental health charity. He’s toyed with bringing it up in an interview before, but I just didn’t realise he felt ready yet.
“To be completely honest with you, Mel, I had terrible mental health after Rio.”
I can feel tears pooling in my eyes listening to him.
“I felt anxious all the time, and like I wasn’t worthy of all the public support because I hadn’t broken any records. I started to push myself more and more and cut everything other than swimming out of my life in a way that wasn’t healthy.”
He pauses, looking directly at the camera before continuing.
“I got really bad anxiety, which peaked in Tokyo. To the extent where I had a panic attack in the showers after I broke the world record. One of my swimmer friends found me and had to call my girlfriend to talk me down. When I looked like I was at the supposed height of my swimming, I was mentally in a very bad place, and it’s taken me a bit of time to get out of it. I’m still a work in progress.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that,” the interviewer says softly and everyone seems to be holding their breath, watching every line of his face. The pain in his eyes.
“Like I said, I think it’s important to talk about these things. I don’t want anyone to feel like their feelings are abnormal or that they can’t talk about these issues. If just one person listens to this and thinks ‘I feel like that too’, I want them to realise that they aren’t alone, that they should seek help. Things do get better. They have for me, and they will for you too.”
“Thank you for sharing that with us,” Mel says.
Tom is squeezing my hand. Claire’s eyes are slightly misty. I think mine are too. I blink hard. Josh studiously looks at his beer.
“Thanks,” Sam says, smiling at the camera. “I hope you all enjoy the rest of the evening.”
As the cameras cut to the next race, I sit there in silence for a few moments.
“Did you know he was going to do that, Kath?” Josh asks.
“No,” I tell him. “Well, sort of. He’d mentioned that he wanted to bring it up in an interview soon. But I didn’t know he was planning on today.”
“He wouldn’t have been able to do it without you,” Josh tells me.
“I always knew you would end up together,” Claire teases, immediately lightening the mood. “He just needed to stop being an idiot, and you needed to realise you loved him.”
“So two quite big things then,” I tell her and she giggles.
I laugh too, but not about what Claire said. I laugh, a little bit in disbelief, because after a decade of friendship, I’m just glad that we finally stopped treading water.
Epilogue
Twenty-eight years old
Sam
Kath dropped me at the Olympic Village this morning, and I’ve just finished with the warm-up before my next race. I re-read her most recent text before popping my phone back into my bag. It’s always the last thing I look at before a race.
Kath:You got this, Champ.
It makes me smile. She’s never missed a major event. Not even in those years when we weren’t speaking. At least this time I know she’ll be in the stands.
The messages from my friends are the same. Though the one from Coach Miller is as predictably gruff as usual.Don’t fuck it up.It made me laugh.
When my name is read out and I walk to my block, the noise in the arena is deafening. I’ve never been in a situation like it before. Thousands upon thousands of people cheering my name. It’s far louder than any of the races before. That home Olympics effect. I give a smile and wave before returning to the mantra in my head.Four minutes, three seconds, and twelve milliseconds, I start repeating to myself.You got this, Champ.
I repeat it to myself as I unzip my sweatshirt and put my stuff into the bag, as I climb up onto the starting block, as I make that first dive.You got this, Champ, I tell myself as I take the next stroke.
As I turn into the breaststroke leg, I can hear them screaming my name every time my head goes above the water. It’s making me faster. Nothing hurts as much as it usually does at this point in the race. My shoulders aren’t screaming. My lungs aren’t burning.
