Women's 100m Freestyle and 200m Freestyle bronze medallist Siobhan Bernadette Haughey of Hong Kong during the Champions Park medallists celebrations in Paris. - Reuters
HONG KONG (SCMP): If someone told Siobhan Haughey the sky was the limit, she would try to find a way to swim through it.
Throughout her swimming career, Haughey, 26, has advanced wave upon wave and again earlier this week, already the most decorated Hong Kong Olympian, she extended her career haul to four medals.
Haughey punched the wall third in the women’s 100 metres freestyle final in the Paris La Defense Arena in 52.33 seconds, finishing 0.17 seconds behind the 52.16 of winner Sarah Sjostrom, the world record-holder.
Two days before, Haughey had again come within tenths of a second of winning gold. She was leading the women’s 200m freestyle for the first 150m, but eventually finished third in 1:54.55.
She was overtaken by Mollie O’Callaghan, whose time of 1:53.27 was an Olympic record, and defending champion and world record-holder Ariarne Titmus, who took silver in 1:53.81.
Three years ago in Tokyo, Haughey became the first Hong Kong swimmer to win an Olympic medal of any colour when she earned silver in both the 100m and 200m freestyle.
Haughey has added four world titles, a short-course world record and six Asian Games medals to her trophy cabinet since that historic achievement.
A flag-bearer for this year’s Olympics, Haughey flew into Paris with a weight of expectation she had not felt before.
Born to an Irish father and Hong Kong mother on October 31, 1997, Haughey started swimming aged four but did not instantly take to the water. In fact, she would resist when her parents dragged her to lessons at the South China Athletic Association (SCAA) in Causeway Bay.
Siobhan Haughey stands on the Paris podium after winning her second bronze of the 2024 Olympics. - Photo: Xinhua
“I didn’t enjoy it at all,” she said. “I thought it was very boring, just swimming up and down the pool, and I would cry every time I went.”
But she soon overcame that and by the time she was seven, she was training five times a week at the SCAA after a coach spotted her international-level potential.
“I think after a while I saw those swimming lessons as a chance to see my friends, rather than to learn how to swim. And so at that age, when you have friends with you, everything seems more enjoyable.”
Fast forward to 2013 and Haughey, 16, was picking up medals at a rate of knots.
At the Fina World Junior Swimming Championships, she set a competition record and won gold in the 100m freestyle alongside bronze in the 50m. At the East Asian Games, Haughey picked up five bronze and two silver medals.
One year and a total of 14 medals from international competitions later and Haughey had qualified for Rio 2016, becoming the first Hong Kong swimmer to break the Olympic qualifying A standard.
The medals slowed down for Haughey, mainly because she had left her hometown to pursue a degree in psychology from the University of Michigan. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, she won her heat in the 200m freestyle, but finished sixth in the semi-finals and 13th overall.
Haughey came home from Rio empty-handed but her progression from the heats was another first for Hong Kong swimmers. Five years later when she won two silvers in Tokyo, she actually contemplated retirement.
Bronze medallist in women's 100m and 200m freestyle swimming Haughey Siobhan Bernadette of Hong Kong poses for a portrait with her medals. - Reuters
“Honestly, after Tokyo, I thought I was done with swimming. I thought of retiring,” she exclusively told the Post in July. “I was worried that Tokyo was my peak, and I couldn’t improve or I couldn’t go any faster.
“It just felt very normal that I should be done after Tokyo,” Haughey said. “I’d been swimming for so long and [thought] maybe after that, I’ll go back to school or find a job somewhere.”
But Haughey continued swimming, mainly because she began training with coach Tom Rushton in 2021, which brought a lifestyle change that made her realise swimming was not something she could move on from.
“We approach training differently, where instead of just training in Hong Kong, we travel around the world to different places, see the world, go to different swim meets,” she said.
Haughey won short-course world titles in 2021 and 2022 in a 25m pool, but the long-course equivalent, in a 50m Olympic-sized pool, eluded her. At the 2023 World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, she won silver in the 100m freestyle.
The 200m free was a nail-biting and cruel affair. Haughey was third after 100m but finished fourth in a race that saw O’Callaghan break the world record, Olympic champion Titmus finish second and Canada’s Summer McIntosh break a world junior record for third.
Last October, Haughey became the most decorated Hong Kong athlete in any one edition of the Asian Games, winning two golds, one silver and three bronzes.
A week later and riding high on those exploits, Haughey swam the 100m free in 52.02 seconds at the swimming World Cup leg in Berlin, the fastest time of the year and third-fastest of all time.
The wait to become a long-course world champion ended in Doha in February, when she won gold in the 200m.
“Finally, I get to not only be on the podium, but on top of it,” she said.
Heading into Paris, Haughey was not only the third-fastest woman ever in the 100m but the seventh in the 200m.
“I trained really hard in Tokyo, but before the Paris Olympics I’m swimming more, I’m doing more, I’m putting more work in at the pool and outside of the pool,” she told the Post.
“I’m doing extra stuff to help with my recovery, my diet, extra training and extra everything because I want to make sure that if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it right.
“Once you meet a certain elite level, it’s even harder to keep improving and to keep getting better.
“I just want to make sure I find that 1 per cent in everything that I do so that I can find different ways to improve. I think if you want to be one of the best, you have to do things that no one else has done.”
She finished one of the best in Paris, but among Hong Kong Olympians she is one of a kind. - South China Morning Post
