Grant Hackett: ‘When the bubble burst, it burst in the most horrible way’

THREE years after Grant Hackett made headlines for an alcohol-fuelled rage inside his apartment, the swimming great and single dad has opened up on rehab and regrets — and his new Olympic dream.

Grant Hackett photographed at Miami Aquatic Centre, Gold Coast on 9 September 2015.

THREE years after Grant Hackett made headlines for an alcohol-fuelled rage inside his apartment, the swimming great and single dad has opened up on rehab and regrets — and his new Olympic dream.

The 35-year-old spoke to WHO magazine about moving on from the night he drunkenly trashed his Melbourne city apartment overturning a piano and furniture, smashing a door and putting holes in the walls after Derby Day in October 2011.

His marriage to pop star Candice Alley, the mother of his six-year-old twins Jagger and Charlize, ended seven months later.

“I fall on my sword for what I’ve done wrong, but I know that’s not me,” he told Who magazine. “Sometimes you just have to hit rock bottom. It makes you realise where you want to go.

Grant Hackett photographed at Miami Aquatic Centre, Gold Coast on 9 September 2015.

“I made some mistakes, I’ve been there, I have been open and honest about it. I’m trying to move forward and that’s where my focus is.”

Hackett, the 2000 and 2004 Olympics 1500m freestyle champion, retired from swimming in 2008 but recently launched a comeback and hopes to swim for Australia at the Rio Olympics next year.

Part of his recovery was admitting himself to rehab in the US to treat his addiction to Stilnox after a February 2014 incident in which he lost his four-year-old son while staying in Crown casino and was pictured wandering around the hotel looking for him in a semi-nude state.

Hackett says the rehabilitation experience taught him a lot.

Read Grant Hackett story in this week’s Who.

Grant Hackett on the beach at Miami with his kids Charlize and Jagger.

“I can’t stand anything that’s not 100 per cent right,” he said of what he learned about himself. “I would never allow myself to relax, always wanted intensity, always wanted to swim hard, go to the gym hard, run hard, do business hard. You have to offset it and I wasn’t offsetting it.

“My capacity was so great, for so long, to handle stuff. I handled it for a long time, but when the bubble burst, it burst in the most horrible way.”

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