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Hong Kong’s two-time Olympic silver medallist Siobhán Haughey shares the best advice she’s received, why more girls should play sports and how she handles social media attention as an introvert
It wasn’t long after winning two silver medals at the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021 that Siobhán Haughey was back in the pool, swimming five-to-six hours a day. She kept up a rigorous training schedule that autumn and, before each competition, people kept telling her that surely this time she would set a world record.
“I was always so close and so close, and this time I finally made it,” Haughey tells us with a grin, thinking back to the World Championships in Dubai in December 2021, where she set a new record for the women’s 200m freestyle.
While Haughey has been thrust into the limelight in recent months, her success hardly came overnight—the humble and poised 24-year-old has been swimming for 20 years. It was one of many sports her parents exposed her to from an early age.
“I was lucky that I grew up in an environment where no one ever told me, ‘you can’t do this because you’re a girl’ or ‘you can only do this because you’re a girl,’” Haughey says. “I never thought that I was limited in my ability to do anything.”
This early confidence and her parents’ unconditional support have buoyed Haughey ever since, as has a powerful support network. We met up with her for a poolside chat in Hong Kong’s Clearwater Bay to dive deeper into what it takes to sustain a high level of performance and how she’s gotten through sacrifices and setbacks along the way.