It wasn’t long after winning two silver medals at the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021 that Siobhán Haughey was back in the pool, swimming five-to-six hours a day. She kept up a rigorous training schedule that autumn and, before each competition, people kept telling her that surely this time she would set a world record.
“I was always so close and so close, and this time I finally made it,” Haughey tells us with a grin, thinking back to the World Championships in Dubai in December 2021, where she set a new record for the women’s 200m freestyle.
While Haughey has been thrust into the limelight in recent months, her success hardly came overnight—the humble and poised 24-year-old has been swimming for 20 years. It was one of many sports her parents exposed her to from an early age.
“I was lucky that I grew up in an environment where no one ever told me, ‘you can’t do this because you’re a girl’ or ‘you can only do this because you’re a girl,’” Haughey says. “I never thought that I was limited in my ability to do anything.”
This early confidence and her parents’ unconditional support have buoyed Haughey ever since, as has a powerful support network. We met up with her for a poolside chat in Hong Kong’s Clearwater Bay to dive deeper into what it takes to sustain a high level of performance and how she’s gotten through sacrifices and setbacks along the way.
