Tokyo Olympics 2021: Message on the bathroom mirror that saved Emily Seebohm

It’s easy to give all your attention to our gold winning swimmers, but Emily Seebohm’s bronze medal – and her incredible fight to win it – deserves our admiration, writes Jessica Halloran.

Emily Seebohm with the champion she has mentored, Kaylee McKeown

Emily Seebohm personifies true grit.

She has fought through some brutal life moments, times when she didn’t feel “enough”, to become an Olympic medallist at her fourth Games.

“Emily has literally crawled her way out of some really dark places,” her mum Karen told The Australian.

It’s very easy to give all your attention to the shiny, bright Olympic gold winning swimmers of the Australian team – but Seebohm’s bronze medal in the 200m backstroke is worth all our focus.

Firstly, there was the way Seebohm claimed her seventh Olympic medal, from nowhere in that final 50 metres of the 200m backstroke.

■ OLYMPICS LIVE: Follow all the latest action from Tokyo

Emily Seebohm speaks to Kaylee McKeown after they finished third and first in the 200m backstroke. Picture: AFP

In those final seconds her dad John thought, “she has got lost”.

Her mum thought, “I don’t think her arms are going over fast enough”.

It would take something special for Seebohm to get into medal contention and she found it. The 29-year-old gutsily ground the field down to bring home the Olympic bronze.

As Seebohm broke down in tears to the poolside TV reporter, in between sobs remarking she wasn’t a crier “at all”, it hinted at the tumult she had been through to get to these Olympics. Emily Seebohm has shown up when most would quit.

She has trained through the physical and mental pain of endometriosis, battled an eating disorder for two years brought on by the sport.

She’d been brutally told to “lose weight” and told she was “too old”.

“It has been a real tough grind for her,” John said.

Seebohm after the final of the women’s 200m backstroke at the World Swimming Trials in June, 2019. She finished a second outside the Australian qualifying mark. Picture: AAP Image/Darren England

The 2019 season was particularly hard for her. She was in the thick of a fight with an eating disorder, which had her bingeing, purging, abusing laxatives, skipping meals, weighing herself constantly.

Her confidence was crippled.

A mentally broken Seebohm could have not turned up to the 2019 trials for Australia’s world championship team. But she did.

“To her credit, she actually went to those trials knowing that she was up against it physically and mentally, she could have easily pulled out and said she was injured or whatever,” Karen said.

“But to her credit she turned up … she dealt with the process after that, which was to miss the team … it just reiterates that true grit that she’s like ‘OK I will always give it my 100 per cent, even though I know that it’s not quite up there’.”

Swimming coach Michael Bohl. Picture: Adam Head

Performance coach Ben Crowe. Picture: Tony Gough

That tough season gave her a chance to reassess the way she was going about her swimming. She switched coaches to calm and composed Michael Bohl, but that meant an arduous commute to the Gold Coast from Brisbane several times a week.

Yet she was still battling mentally, and one day her mum heard Wimbledon champion Ash Barty’s performance coach, Ben Crowe, on the radio.

Karen reached out to Crowe.

He made time for Seebohm to help her.

From there on, she worked on her self-worth, her confidence started to lift.

On her bathroom mirror, Seebohm wrote, “I AM ENOUGH” as a daily reminder to herself.

Then Covid hit. Gyms shut. Pools shut. She took up running for the first time and from a shuffle she soon managed to string 15km together. Seebohm kept fighting.

Seebohm with a young Kaylee McKeown.

McKeown and Seebohm together on the podium.

At the end of 2020 she got a tattoo of a butterfly, a nod to the Butterfly Foundation, which raises awareness around eating disorders, as a reminder of the demons she has battled.

Just before the 200m backstroke final on Saturday her mum texted her: “Tough times don’t last but tough people do.”

On Saturday the fight back was complete with a bronze medal.

Her brother, Will, says not many get to see the “real Emily” in the media.

“She is a very, good, good person,” Will says.

“Sometimes that gets lost in the Olympics, people just see the athlete, but she is a good person.”

Emily Seebohm with her father John, brother Will and mother Karen. Picture: Sarah Reed

A moment her family says that sums her up, is when Emily asked Kaylee McKeown if she could present her with her Olympic gold medal.

Seebohm – who is an unsung leader of this swim team – has mentored the now two-time Olympic backstroke champion for some time.

McKeown grew up idolising Seebohm. It was no surprise that the 200m backstroke Olympic champ insisted Seebohm share the top of the dais with her hero.

“What Emily showed yesterday, not only the strength and fight in the race, but the just the beautiful humbleness of asking if she could present Kaylee with a medal, that was a real moment where as parents you sit back and go, well, that’s a beautiful moment and you’re bursting with pride,” Karen said.

Karen said the entire experience has been “magical” for their family.

“Finally the stars, the moon, the whole lot has lined up,” Karen says.

“But at the end of the day, it was hard work. It was a total commitment, crawling through dark times, getting up, battling on and away she went. She never gave up.”

And, that’s true grit.

Originally published as Tokyo Olympics 2021: Message on the bathroom mirror that saved Emily Seebohm