Retired Olympic swim star Stephanie Rice reveals her mental health battles

There was a time Olympic swim star Stephanie Rice was so caught up in her own success, she was “walking around thinking I was the shit”. And then everything came crashing down.

Stephanie Rice wins gold at the 2008 Olympics in the women's 200m individual medley.

Stephanie Rice went to her first Olympics in Beijing as a 20-year-old and left a three-time Olympic champion. She was highly sought-after, but battled with the demands asked of her in the pool, and out of it. Her body let her down and she retired at 24. Steph then struggled in retirement, missing the highs of the sport, and battling to find a path forward. She posted after watching the Tokyo Olympics about how she was struggling seeing the current athletes do what she once did, and how her transition to life without swimming had been testing.

HM: This is going to be quite a complex chat, Steph.

SR: I know. I’m excited, though.

HM: Let’s go right back a little. You didn’t enjoy school much, you struggled with connection?

SR: I was shy, and I really didn’t have many friends in primary school at all. In grade 5 I would sit with the grade 2s at lunchtime because they were nice, they included me and they made me feel seen. When I found swimming, and started getting good at it, that’s when I realised I had a community that understood me and included me. A big part of my love for swimming was because it made me feel a part of something. I didn’t have that feeling at school.

HM: It wasn’t the winning in the pool but the rewards that were associated with the success in the pool — a sense of acknowledgment and inclusion and community?

SR: Yes. I remember in PE class they would pick a captain to pick their own team and I would always be picked last because nobody wanted me on their team. When I started to get better at swimming, they started picking me first.

‘I didn’t have many friends in primary school . . . I was always be picked last because nobody wanted me on their team’

HM: Did that make you feel better?

SR: It did; being included because I was good at something drove part of my ambition to succeed in the pool. But when I look back, I realise it was reinforcing this false belief system that you must be good at something to be included and recognised. But at the time, those feelings helped fuel my swimming career. If I won, I would be included and liked and not left out.

HM: The more you won, the more you were recognised, the more you were appreciated, and the bigger sense of validation you had, and less sense of isolation?

SR: Yeah, and all of those things – inclusion, validation, appreciation — feel good. A lot of people are searching for their purpose in life and I felt like I had found mine very young. That’s a powerful feeling.

A young Stephanie Rice shouts for joy after Olympic success.

HM: You got very good, very quickly. Professional swimming became a reality when you were very young.

SR: I would have been 15 when I first had the thought that I could do it seriously, as a profession. At the time, I was the fastest in my age group within Australia. I won six gold medals at the Nationals, but I knew transferring over to the senior Australian team was going to be tough.

HM: Susie O’Neill inspired you.

SR: Susie was the one I looked up to. I watched her at the 2000 Olympics when I was 12, I saw her win, and then she did this cool dance. She was bubbly, pretty, fun and an incredible athlete. I remember thinking: “That’s what I want to do!”

HM: Five years later you won three golds and stunned the world at the Beijing Games.

SR: It still doesn’t feel real. I achieved everything I dreamt of, but it was all a little surreal. I remember my coach saying to me before the Olympics that if I won a gold medal my life would change forever, and it would never be the same. I couldn’t understand the depth of what he was saying. I do now.

HM: Did you think it would make you feel different, happier, more fulfilled?

SR: Winning three golds changed everything overnight. I was the same person that I was beforehand but now I was getting treated very differently.

HM: In terms of?

SR: I had everyone wanting to know me and old school friends suddenly wanting to catch up even though we hadn’t stayed in contact. It was really overwhelming, but also very flattering. People were treating me differently but I felt the same. It was confusing. I was fortunate to have some really good friends and an incredible family that kept me grounded. And then I also had all these extra sponsor commitments which I absolutely loved, but I also found it really hard to give everyone what they wanted. With my coach and family, we were both having to learn in real time what was working, what wasn’t working, who we could trust, how to manage the schedule of sponsors, peoples’ expectations, and still train well, so I could perform well and retain all the work.

Stephanie with her Beijing 2008 gold medal for the women’s 200m individual medley.

HM: You really battled mentally and physically they year after the Beijing Games didn’t you?

SR: Yeah, 2009 was one of my worst years. I really didn’t handle it well. In swimming, the Olympics is the pinnacle, so you start your preparation for that four years out, continually building towards that one big goal. So after Beijing, there was a massive comedown, mentally and physically. I loved what Susie did outside of the pool with the sponsorships and the media. I felt like I was getting pulled in so many directions with sponsors and swimming commitments and I wanted it all, but I just felt like I was constantly disappointing people. I was either disappointing my coach because I had dedicated time to fulfil my sponsor commitments, or I was disappointing my sponsors because I couldn’t attend events because I had to train.

“After Beijing, there was a massive comedown, mentally and physically”

HM: You weren’t happy with who you were at the time were you?

SR: I say this to my family and my agent all the time: I would not have wanted to date me in 2009. I would not have wanted to be around me at all that year. It’s natural, but because I was young and didn’t really know who I was, when everybody around you is telling you how amazing you are, you start believing it. I was walking around thinking I was the shit, I was amazing, I could do whatever I wanted to. I had money — money fuels ego too. I was brought back to earth heavily when I posted that tweet and I don’t want to go into that here, but that brought me back to life.

HM: Did you still love swimming?

SR: I did, but it felt like it was now a job. Leading into the Commonwealth Games in 2006, and the Beijing Olympics in 2008, it still felt very much like a passion. Training was always serious, but it was also fun and lighthearted. After Beijing, it all got really serious. I felt it became a job where people were investing in me, and I felt …

HM: … a weight?

SR: Yeah. Not that they put the pressure on me, I just felt it. Any spare time I had was consumed with sponsor work, physio appointments, interviews, business meetings and I felt like I had a responsibility to continue to make everybody happy.

“I was written up as a party girl”

HM: I’ve heard you say: “I’ve always cared about what people thought of me, probably to my own detriment. It hurts when you are portrayed as someone when you’re not.” Is that the party girl aspect?

SR: For me, there is no worse feeling than being misunderstood, and I felt I was. I was written up as a party girl and that I multiple boyfriends, and wasn’t focused and was drinking and partying all the time. It couldn’t have been further from the truth. If I was out partying, that was in the two weeks of the year that our training allowed us to do so. They weren’t writing about the other 50 weeks of the year where I am working my arse off in the pool. That hurt me because there was such a misalignment between who I was and who people thought I was. Plus, there was no social media back then, so I didn’t feel I had a voice or platform to showcase my truth.

HM: It’s hard to change a view, or a public sentiment, quickly, or at all.

SR: Definitely.

HM: It was Mark Twain who said: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes”.

SR: It’s so true.

Australia’s Kylie Palmer, Bronte Barratt and Stephanie Rice celebrate setting a new world record and winning gold in the women’s 4x200m freestyle relay in Beijing.

Stephanie Rice rejoices after breaking the women’s 400m individual medley world record.

HM: You had the injuries leading into London, three shoulder surgeries, and then suddenly, you’re retired at 24. Is that because you are mentally exhausted, physically done, or a combination?

SR: A combination. My career had been on an upward trajectory, from 15 to 20, and every year I would hit a new milestone, so there was always a lot of positive momentum. 2009 to 2012 brought about so many challenges, and trying to stay positive through what felt like constant adversity was draining and took everything out of me. I saw every specialist I could see for my shoulder. I tried every type of natural medicine, I was so anally perfect on my recovery, my nutrition, my swimming training. Whatever it was, I did it and left no stone unturned in my pursuit for performance perfection once again. But for every step forward I took, I took three steps backward. I was so drained. I couldn’t wait for the London Olympics to be over because I knew I couldn’t hold on to my body and mind for much longer.

HM: You knew the transition was going to be heavy, and complicated, and filled with emotional challenges but you didn’t think you would get so lost, and feel so depressed. I’ve heard you say, a sense of irrelevance.

SR: I didn’t know the transition would be so hard, and it wasn’t until I started feeling all these challenges internally that I realised: “I don’t know what to do here – I am not equipped with life out of the pool.” I like problem solving. If you swam a bad race, there was a strategy. You can watch it back, analyse it, find out what went wrong, implement those strategies and improve your performance. But out of the pool I felt really lost. What am I going to do? I need a job. But I don’t want to work 9 to 5. What skills do I have? I didn’t go to uni. It felt like I didn’t know where to go, how to problem-solve, how to work it out, how to goal-set. What am I goal-setting for? I thought something was wrong with me, and it fuelled a lot of insecurities.

“I was searching to be relevant again, I thought I could be a tennis player”

HM: How did you address the insecurities when you realised they existed and you needed to go from depressed, with a sense of irrelevance and loneliness, to happy again?

SR: I didn’t know what to do, that was the problem. I know I experienced what would be a depressive state, but I would never say I had depression, because I don’t think of it in that way. I want to make sure that’s conveyed. I was at my lowest point, and I was really struggling with my identity, but I wouldn’t say I was depressed. I felt like I couldn’t answer the question: “Who am I now? Who am I if I’m not a swimmer?”

I was searching for that one thing that would make me relevant again. I thought, maybe I could be a tennis player, ha. I knew how to do the athletic thing, I knew how to be resilient, I had all the skills to be a high performer, plus, tennis players compete until they’re older, they make a lot of money, they travel. It was ticking so many boxes. So I called up Pat Cash and asked him for tennis lessons.

HM: Are you serious?

SR: It makes me laugh thinking back on it now. Yeah, he gave me tennis lessons for two weeks, but at the end of the two weeks I realised it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t want to do all the hard training again, slogging it out. I didn’t want to start from ground zero. I wanted to be good at it already. That’s the big problem. Athletes are used to being so good at something, that when you’re not good at something it feels like it doesn’t go with your identity of being a high achiever.

HM: Mediocrity doesn’t sit well with high achievers.

SR: No, and I was looking for one thing that would solve everything. I stumbled across Tony Robbins videos on YouTube, and loved his teachings, but more importantly the way it made me feel. So my girlfriend, Rebecca Soni, an American swimming gold medallist, and I went to one of his seminars in New York. That was a catalyst for finding hope again. I did the event and felt like he’d hit on so many of the things that I’d been feeling. I’d been feeling like I was the only person in the world feeling that way. It gave me hope. When I finished swimming, I felt like that was the pinnacle of my life and that everything was on a downhill slope thereafter. Nothing I would do would be as successful, or as exciting, or as fulfilling or as celebrated, as what I had already achieved. I had this outlook that everything would be boring, would be less.

HM: You felt everything was going to be “less”.

SR: As an athlete, you are so used to experiencing the most intense positive emotions, but intense low emotions, and you fly around feeling alive because you are experiencing all this intensity. When you stop, it’s like everything is numb and mediocre.

HM: You were chasing highs.

SR: Maybe if you haven’t felt the natural high highs, the rush, the adrenaline, you wouldn’t know otherwise, but I had the highs. I’d felt what it’s like to really be alive. So I just couldn’t do something that was steady, or simple or boring to me after that and I couldn’t find anything that wasn’t. I believe that’s why some retired athletes turn to drugs, it’s something that will give them the feeling that they’re alive again. You’re looking for extremes and I think that’s why we subconsciously self-sabotage. There’s no vehicle to put all that energy and drive into. I’d had enough awareness, plus I’d already self-sabotaged my life in 2009 … so I found Tony Robbins and personal development and that’s where I chose to focus my energy, into working on me.

HM: What hope did Tony give you?

SR: I don’t know if it was one thing. If you’ve ever seen a Tony Robbins conference, you know how high energy they are and therefore they make you feel alive. Suddenly, I felt like I did at the Olympics. I was high on life and felt so excited. That was the energy in the room — I loved that. He touched on so many mental qualities that made me a good athlete, and I didn’t realise those were tools I could use in this new stage of life. Visualising the framework for goal setting, manifesting, meditating.

HM: You watched Tokyo, and the swimmers’ success, and you really battled watching others doing what you wanted to do.

SR: I knew watching the Tokyo Olympics was going to be tough. In Rio, I was still lost and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I still felt low in general, and watching it was hard, because I felt like I was missing out. I so missed being there, I missed being on the team, I missed the experience and the camaraderie.

Stephanie Rice’s Instagram post reveals her mental health struggles.

HM: Tokyo was different, though?

SR: I knew watching it was going to be challenging and it was going to bring up past trauma and deep emotions. I was hyper-aware that it was going to happen, because I’ve done so much work on myself through the healing journey. I have the tools, so I know when I am experiencing stress or some form of emotional volatility that I need to meditate, or go for a walk, journal, just do something to help that emotion pass through me so I can come back to a place of inner calmness. I had all the tools in my toolbelt, I knew it was coming, but I still struggled.

“I was jealous of the Australian swimmers at the Tokyo Olympics”

HM: What was it that affected you?

SR: It’s knowing that I would never experience that again, never be able to go back; a sadness, grief, deep loss. Swimming was such a huge part of my life and I have so many beautiful memories from that time, so watching others do the thing that I used to do, at such a high level, with the knowing it will never happen again makes me sad. The Olympics is also the highlight moment, and it’s really easy to reminisce on the highlights, the good times, the fulfilling moments but when I think back on what it takes to get to that highlight moment, all the pain and training and sweat, I don’t miss it at all. On one hand I absolutely loved seeing my friends achieve their childhood dreams and feeling such pride for them and knowing how hard they have worked to get there but on the other hand I was essentially jealous of what they were all feeling and experiencing and missing that feeling within myself. Is that sad? It was like being jealous of peoples’ Instagram lives — you know that isn’t their real life, it’s been editing, filtered, manipulated, yet you still look at it and think “I wish I had that”.

HM: A mate told me the other day that “comparison is the thief of joy”.

SR: That’s a great quote. I will remember that.

HM: Grief?

SR: In order to move forward from my life as an athlete, I had to completely let go of who I was then, so I could find who I am now. So watching the Olympics to me at this stage brings about a feeling of grief, like I’m mourning a part of myself that has died that can never come back. You are mourning an identity of yourself, and that’s hard to process. I was taken back by how many people resonated with my post that weren’t athletes that have experienced similar feelings.

HM: You verbalised your mourning, and the response from retired athletes was significant.

SR: And they were only the ones that publicly commented. There were plenty that messaged me privately, that thanked me for talking about it, and sharing it. That touched me deeply, because that’s what I would love to have read when I was in the thick of the struggle. The waves of emotions I felt while watching the Olympics were tough, but it doesn’t flow through me like that every day and that’s where parts of my post were missed. Mental health isn’t about having it all together all of the time or being feeling completely broken all of the time. There are good days, bad days, normal days and that is all about of the journey. I can confidently say I am a truly happy, content, fulfilled, appreciative woman. I love my life and the people in it… and yes, I experience sadness and grief, too. It’s all normal.

HM: What advice would you give to athletes or people in the thick of the struggle now?

SR: Accept that you feel this way, that you feel lost or have a deep sadness. It’s OK for this emotion to flow through you in this moment. In fact, it’s healthy that you allow yourself to really feel the emotions that come forth, because they are there for a reason, and when you accept that you feel them, you can start to let go and release control and find peace within.

HM: Who are you now?

SR: I have accepted that there will probably never been an easy, succinct, one word response to that question or any one title that I could give myself that would sum up everything. I know who I am, what I value, what I stand for and importantly won’t stand for, I know my skills, my worth, what interests me and what I want– and I’m very confident in that.

“Watching the Olympics was the last step in getting to the light at the end of the tunnel”

HM: Are you happy?

SR: I really am. I am so appreciative for where I am now because I know what it feels like to not feel this way. For me to feel good, I don’t have to achieve something, although I’m sure I will always be competitive, but there is no transactional expectation. The drive that made me an Olympic champion never went away, but I’ve finally found where and how to channel it, and I really do love my life and what I am working towards. I love the diversity and joy I receive through my work as a brand ambassador, a mentor, a businesswoman and an investor. I love the simplicity in my day-to-day routine, but also the adventure and opportunities constantly around me. I knew watching the Olympics was the last step in getting to that light at the end of the tunnel … and I’m so glad I’m here.

HM: But you got there.

SR: I did.

HM: I sense talking about it has helped others, but it’s helped you.

SR: I really feel it’s been mutually beneficial, a win-win. I wanted to post about these emotions to show people that it’s OK not to be OK all of the time. People look at my page, or me in general, and say: “You’re such a happy, positive, healthy person” and I really am, but I still feel things deeply and have harder days. And that’s OK.

Originally published as Retired Olympic swim star Stephanie Rice reveals her mental health battles