Siobhan Haughey reveals her light bulb moment as she passes on swimming insights to Hong Kong’s next generation
- Haughey gives demonstration in the pool to local youngsters at Swim to Dream event and discusses her decorated career
- She reflects on her journey from ‘random girl’ to star, helped by a breakthrough realisation at the Tokyo Olympics
Sitting in the call room ahead of her 200 metres freestyle final at the Tokyo Olympics, Siobhan Haughey looked at the swimmers assembled around her and had something of an epiphany.
The Hong Kong star was moments away from winning a silver medal, but it was not until then, sitting next to the likes of Ariarne Titmus and Katie Ledecky, that she realised she belonged.
Haughey won the city’s first medal of any colour in the pool at an Olympics that day in Japan, and added a second in the 100m freestyle, cementing her place among the best athletes Hong Kong has ever produced.
Since then, she has set world records, dominated World Cup events, made more history in winning Hong Kong’s first swimming gold at the Asian Games and will carry its hopes, its expectations, and quite possibly its flag, in Paris this summer.
That is a lot for the 26-year-old to have sitting on her shoulders, and Haughey admitted thinking about whether that made her third Olympics harder than those in Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.
“I don’t know, but I feel like on one hand, I think people might have a lot of expectations on how I should perform,” she said. “But I feel like now that I have two Olympics behind me, and I have more confidence and more experience than before, I just want to make sure I enjoy the whole thing, because I don’t know how many more Olympics I’m going to.