Sarah Ryan on falling back in love with swimming
Three-time Olympic swimmer and South Australian Sport Hall of Fame inductee Sarah Ryan OAM reflects on life out of the pool and winning the gold without getting on the podium.
Ryan didn’t have a plan when she retired from swimming, and she regretted it.
“I made the mistake of putting all my eggs in the basket of sport,” she said.
“I have a lot of friends that continued to study and got degrees and had much more direction when they retired, I didn’t.”
Despite feeling directionless, the Olympian, World Championship and Commonwealth Games medallist has worked in radio, sports administration (for cricket, not swimming), events, fundraising and even made it to the final of a reality TV singing competition in 2006.
The show, It Takes Two was the singing equivalent of Dancing with the Stars and paired her with fellow South Australian Guy Sebastian. It allowed her to raise money for MS and get out of her comfort zone.
“It was one of those silly things you do, you know, when somebody says, ‘oh, would you like to do this?’ I looked at it as an opportunity,” she said.
“It was really no negatives, it was just getting over your nerves and singing live, when the first show was about to start standing backstage, you’re going, ‘oh my god, what have I done,” she laughs.
Sarah Ryan with Guy Sebastian after the filming of an episode of It Takes Two, 2006.
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Another positive aspect of her time after competing was that she focused wholly on her first pregnancy, as the now mum of two settled into motherhood.
“That’s quite a really unique time of your life when you start to not put yourself first, you focus on another little human and keeping them alive,” she said.
“I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do with myself, so I got involved in learn to swim and swim coaching… I obviously had the skill set and knowledge to be in that swim space but after a couple of years, I think I needed a break, I got a little bit sick of the chlorine.”
Ryan recognised the need to take breaks from the pool pre-retirement as well, hitting pause in the lead up to her last Olympics, Athens 2004, when she anticipated it “was going to be a hard slog”.
“You’re going to laugh, I did breakfast radio in Canberra so it was like, I decided to have sleep-ins, but then I chose a job that meant I got up even earlier!”
The Australian 4X100 medley relay team celebrate winning silver at the ’96 Olympics in Atlanta. The team were Ryan, Nicole Stevenson, Samantha Riley and Susie O’Neill. Photo: Denis Paquin/AAP.
Ryan’s Olympic journey was one with mixed emotions. Her first Olympics were in Atlanta in 1996, she set personal bests and felt the buzz of the village. Swimming at home in Sydney 2000 was special, but bittersweet as she felt she didn’t perform at her best.
Then in 2004, she got the gold in Athens but not in the way she expected.
“I prepared with the other three girls for the relay and the lead up so in my mind, there was never any thought that I wasn’t racing that final,” she said.
“But as is allowed, other swimmers can do a time trial and put their hand up to be considered to swim in a relay and someone else did that and they were faster, so I actually watched the final relay from the stand.
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“It’s a bit cruel because you do get the gold, yes, you do get the medal as you contributed to the results, but it’s a funny one because I don’t feel like I earned it because I wasn’t in the race.”
The experience was a learning curve but with time, Ryan reflects with grace.
“It was a tricky one because I was in tears in the crowd watching for myself, having not had that fairy tale finish that I thought I was going to have,” she said.
“However, I was also having tears of joy because it was the first time that that team went on to beat the Americans after, truly, 10 years but not only that, they did it in a world record time.
“It was so impressive, like they just dominated and that was fantastic for Australia and for those girls.”
About 20 years on, Ryan is now the Director of Development at Mater Dei, an education and therapy support service for children and young adults with an intellectual disability.
When InDaily asks her how she defines success now, she calls on the friendships she built in the sport and the perspective it gave her.
“You’ve experienced such a unique time together and you can relate to the hard yards and the pain and the sacrifices that you’ve made, so there’s that shared understanding of the journey,” she said.
“The hardest thing to learn is that at the Olympics, only one person can be a gold medallist in whatever the event is out of millions in the world. So you aim for that, but you do also need to have a little bit of a reality reminder that that’s an extraordinary achievement, right?”
Ryan is rediscovering her love of swimming after retirement. Photo: Peter Mars/AAP, 2001.
For a big chunk of time, Ryan didn’t swim.
“When I dive in, I know I’m never going to feel as good as I used to, I know I’m not going to swim as fast. It’s not going to be as easy,” she said.
“My memory of swimming is what I love, so why would I get in now and feel slow and heavy?
“I have only, in the last month just gone through a few swims, and I think I’ve come full circle where I can actually just switch off, don’t count your laps, or count your times, or think of it as training.”
The latest inductees to the South Australian Sport Hall of Fame will be announced at a gala night at the Adelaide Oval on February 21. Tickets are on sale now.
Read InDaily throughout February as we reveal this year’s inductees.
