We knew that Titmus and Ledecky were great distance swimmers and they would come back faster than I would, so my strategy was to go out faster and be ahead so they would have to catch me. We knew that I had really good natural speed, so the first 50, we were just thinking about easy speed and then really build on the second 50. “That’s kind of what I did, but I thought of it differently at the Olympics. “Typically, I would go out fast in the first 100 and hang on in the second 100,” Haughey said. We’re not going to miss by 2-tenths again.’ You set goals, and you don’t always make them, and you set another goal.”įor this race, her first Olympic final, Haughey and Bishop had devised a plan to maximize her strengths against her accomplished competition.
This is when we were like, ‘This time, we actually are going to do it. After that, we went back to training, and we talked about what we wanted to do leading up to Tokyo.
“Before Worlds that year, Rick and I sat down, and he was like, ‘You can medal in the 200 free at Worlds,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, I can.’ I worked really hard, and that didn’t happen. She knew exactly what she had to do,’” Haughey recalled. She’s always very hard-working, but she’s even more focused. “I didn’t realize it, but Rick was saying, ‘After 2019 Worlds, Siobhan was training completely differently. And as she came within one spot of a medal in 2019, Bishop noticed a change. A year later, she began making a significant impact on the NCAA level when she finished fourth in the 200 yard free behind a loaded field at the NCAA Championships, and a few months after that, she surpassed all expectations by placing fifth in the 200 meter free at the World Championships. Bishop had led Haughey to her first Olympics in 2016, where she finished 12th in the 200 free. “I wanted to be upset, but I also did my best.”Īt that point, Haughey had been training at the University of Michigan under Rick Bishop for four years, and that partnership had been fruitful. “That was one of those races where I wanted to be upset because I missed the podium by 2-tenths, but I went a best time by more than half a second,” Haughey said. The magical run began in the 200 free final, where Haughey was 2019 World Championships, missing a medal by just 2-tenths, but breaking 1:55 for the first time. “In Hong Kong, we’re not really known for our sports, so the fact that people were watching my races and other Hong Kong athletes’ competition, it was great, and I never thought I would receive such great support from the people in Hong Kong,” Haughey said. It was part of a truly historic performance at the Tokyo Games for the island nation, which won six total medals after only having won three medals ever prior to 2021. Two days later, she became the first and only Hong Kong Olympian to capture a second Olympic medal. They watched as Haughey became just the fifth individual athlete or team in any sport to win an Olympic medal for Hong Kong. Others were on the train, where seemingly every passenger had their phone tuned to the women’s 200 freestyle final and, two days later, the women’s 100 freestyle final.
Several of Haughey’s friends were at work at the time, and they watched on office conference room televisions. In Hong Kong, people gathered in shopping malls in the middle of the morning, crowding in front of big screens to watch their national hero, Siobhan Haughey, race for Olympic medals.
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