What Comes After Gold, With Olympian Missy Franklin

Hey, slight changers. This summer, Pushkin is going to the Olympics. Our friends across the Pushkin network are sharing all sorts of stories about one of the world's biggest sporting events. They're talking to a coach who counsels all the Olympic coaches. They're diving deep into the latest sports science, and they're sharing the origin story of brands like Puma and Adidas. Here at a slight change of plans. For the next few weeks, we're going to be hearing from three Olympic

I remember sitting behind the wheel just crying the entire way to practice and just knowing that I was gonna go, and that I was about to jump into a freezing cold pool and swim for two hours and be disappointed with how I did.

Swimmer Missy Franklin won four Olympic gold medals as a teenager, but as she trained for her second Olympics, she found herself unexpectedly struggling with so much to defend. The pool suddenly felt like a pressure cooker.

This is not just a swim mate. This is who I am. And if I don't do this, why am I here? What is my worth? I have none if I can't do this and do it well.

On today's episode, when the loss of an identity threatens your self worth, I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. At just seventeen years old, Missy Franklin was laser focused on qualifying for the twenty twelve Olympics in London. This dream was years in the making. From the time Missy was a little kid, swimming had been at the center of her life.

I got into the water because my mom never learned how to swim, and she didn't want to pass that fear down on to me, and she signed us up for a mommy and me class at our local YMCA when I was six months old, and I was that baby that was getting dunked under and coming back up,

You mentioned that you never thought of your commitment as sacrifice because you loved it so much. Share a bit more about what that commitment looked like. What was your everyday life like in the lead up to twenty twelve.

We'd practice Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so that means swimming twice, once in the morning, once in the afternoon, each for about two hours, and then we'd have single swim sessions on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. But I don't think people can sometimes totally comprehend the fact that it is a twenty four to seven job because everything needs to be supported by everything you're doing outside of that space as well. So it's your sleep, it's your nutrition, it's your recovery.

I was still in school every.

Single day, and then traveling and doing different promos for the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee and NBC and traveling for different meats preparing leading up to that summer. But it sounds like a lot. It was also all that I knew, So to me, that was just life.

Yeah, tell me a bit more about where your head was at as you were you were prepping for London, and it's wow, like maybe these big dreams of mine can actually come true.

Yeah, so I think heading into London, my goal truly was to make the team, like that was really all that I had set on myself. And if you talk to any swimmer, they will tell you that Olympic trials is infinitely more intense and more pressure filled than the actual Olympics themselves, because once you made the team, you made it right, you're an Olympian, Like you get to

You had mentioned to me that you didn't feel the pressure, the weight of other people's expectations at this stage, and so was that partly why you were able to be cool and collected during those trials.

I think a lot of it was just the.

Fact that I was seventeen and I was naive, and that just absolutely played to my advantage of again, I was just out there doing what I loved.

So, I mean, Missy, your performance in those games was just absolutely unreal. Do you mind sharing your accomplishments?

So after Olympic trials, I had qualified for my first Olympic Games and seven events, and then actually arriving in London, being in the village and getting to walk onto the Olympic pool deck for the first time, all of it was just so surreal. I ended up walking away from those games with four gold medals, one bronze, and two world records.

So astonishing to hear those words like I know that, I know that, but just to like hear that is insane. It's like oh yeah, I forgot about the bronze ones as well, and like the world records And is there any specific memory you have from those games and your celebrations.

Yeah, oh my gosh, And it has nothing to do with a single one of those medals. The night that I had won my first gold medal, I was still writing such a high from that whole evening and just everything that came with it. And we were at the warm up pool in the village and I checked my phone and I had a tweet from Justin Bieber, and

Yes, I was so happy to be there.

I couldn't believe I was accomplishing those things, but I was also just a seventeen year old girl.

Wow. So I want to talk about the aftermath of your success, because sometimes we don't pay enough attention to what follows these massive, epic, life changing wins. You know, you come back to the US and your four time gold medalist, Missy Franklin. You immediately go back to training and preparing for now the twenty sixteen Olympic Games. And as you started to train for those, you began to face some new challenges. Do you mind telling me a bit about those?

Yeah, that's funnily enough.

What a lot of people don't understand is that as soon as an Olympic Games is so, we might take a couple of weeks off, but the next summer for US is World Championships, and so we get right back into training because we have a really serious meet again next summer. And so I remember particularly coming back from London and thinking that I wanted to prove that I

No longer naive. I was no longer a rookie.

It's so hard getting to the top, but it's even harder staying there. And now I did have those expectations and that pressure, and then you add new sponsors on top of that, and swimming now becoming my job as opposed to just something that I love and enjoy. And I think that for me is what completely changed my mindset, and I lost all sense of balance during that time.

I think for some athletes.

It works to completely devote themselves to their sport and to not have balance in their life, just to be they live and they breathe their sport, and that is what works for them. I learned in that period that that is not something that worked for me. When swimming became my whole world, it also became my whole identity, and so bad practices, bad races I began equating with bad sense of self and self worth and self esteem, and so it was such a hard time for me.

I was very, very lonely, and.

I started to feel the world's pressure on me as well that not only was I expected to make the team, but I was expected to go back to Rio and have an even better performance there than I did in London.

What was it now like day to day as your training?

It was so hard for me, Maya, because there were days that I was so confused because I had never felt like this before. So there were mornings where my alarm would go off at four forty five. I'd be getting up on my way to practice, but I remember sitting behind the wheel just crying the entire way to practice and just knowing that I was going to go and that I was about to jump into a freezing cold pool and swim for two hours and be disappointed

I've read that when people had asked young Missy, like seventeen year old Missy, what advice do you have for people who don't want to go to practice or are struggling with their motivation, you would cheepishly be like, I've never really had that problem. Yeah, I just love going to the pool, and I actually don't face those motivational challenges because this is the thing that I'm so passionate about.

It was so funny to me that I was put in those situations, and I would always feel so horrible when I would have young athletes come up and ask what to do in periods of plateau or when they weren't feeling motivated.

And I would have nothing to say.

I had truly just always been so happy and enjoyed the sports so much. And the amount of other swimmers that would come up to me after they had gotten to know me that told me we thought it was an act, Like we thought that it was all for the media, that it was all like that you just love like we didn't believe that someone could actually love this sport that much. And now that we know you, we see that it's real and it's authentic and you actually love swimming as much as you say you do with that.

And that completely disappeared. Leading up to Rio.

I think I became so focused on the expectation and I put so much pressure on myself that swimming very very quickly became not fun for me.

What was what was happening to your mental health around this time?

So I don't think I really realized what was happening because I had never experienced anything like this, and so it was months and months and months before I think it finally hit me that this is something bigger, like something much deeper is going on here that I don't know how to name, I don't know how to diagnose. All I know is that I am deeply, deeply unhappy

I wonder was there ever a script that was playing in your mind or a certain kind of rumination pattern that you felt yourself falling into.

Yeah, I mean I think that rumination and that pattern was just negative self talk. It kind of dawned on me that I hadn't said something kind to myself in months, that I hadn't said something encouraging to myself. And for those that know me, I am the most positive, optimistic person that you will ever meet. And that person was gone. And it's so crazy to think that she fully disappeared before I even realized she was fading.

You know.

It was just such a stark contrast. And I think it's that double edged sword of the elite athlete mentality of you just keep going and you just figure it out, like we're just we have that mindset to keep pushing and to keep moving forward.

But when that comes to mental health.

I think that that can be so damaging because if you're pushing through that and not addressing it, it's only going to get harder to deal with as time goes on. Because in my case, the problems were just getting more severe.

And what kinds of things would you say to yourself.

I think my berating of myself really came down to not believing I had any worth outside of what I could do in a pool. So if I wasn't capable of breaking world records and winning gold medals, why was I here? You know, what other purpose did I serve other than to do what I was put on this earth to do, which in my mind was to swim like that.

That was it.

That's all I had ever known since I was so young, and all I had ever known was that success. So I think it really just came down to not understanding or not knowing what my worth was.

If it wasn't in the pool.

What do you think gave rise to the eating disorder in particular? Tell me a bit more about that.

So, I think, with my self worth being the lowest it had ever been in and again, feeling so out of control, I turned to the one thing I felt like I could control, which was my nutrition and my body. And so, of course it's a tough scenario as an adolescent female to be in anyway, right, being in a swimsuit in front of so many people and trying to

And here I am training.

Two to four hours a day, eating barely enough calories. I mean, I don't know how I was doing it. And so all those diagnoses were just so hard because we didn't have time to go to the foundation and systemically fix the problem, like we were trying to put a band aid over a gaping wound that needed staples.

You're a few months away from needing to compete in Rio, and not just compete, defend your titles, defend your your ranking, your reputation in the world of swimming. What did that version of bandating look like?

Yeah?

So, well, the other piece of all of this is that I actually did sustain a physical injury in April, So I injured my shoulder in April, and again that was something that we didn't have time to fix. And so at that point, I'm just distraught, like I'm now emotionally and physically so far away from where I need to be. So my band aid solution was immediately getting in with the sports psychologist, a nutritionist, and a physical therapist, and those three were there to just do what they could.

Did you find yourself having to do some of these hacky, fake it till you make it type strategies just to get by during that time?

Yes?

And what did that look like?

It was just the big old miss you smile. And it was the first time in my life that it wasn't genuine but I was trying to put that smile on for everyone else. I was trying to be that happy, bubbly seventeen year old that they all remembered and were expecting me to be, even though I had probably never felt further from her in my life.

And I just didn't want to let people down.

And so I remember going into trials not out of joy or excitement and love for the sport, but just being absolutely terrified that I wasn't going to do what was expected of me.

And how did the trials go?

Yeah, so definitely off to a rocky start for trials for Rio. I failed to make the team in the event that I was the reigning Olympic champion in from twenty twelve, and not even that, I mean I got seventh, so there's only eight people in a heat, so I almost got dead.

Last in my heat.

And I remember going back to my hotel room that night and sobbing, like just absolu, like I felt embarrassed, like I felt ashamed. I was just holding so much, and I kind of just gave myself talk in the hotel room of you know, you can pack up and leave right now, like you can get on a flight and you can go home, but you will never forgive yourself like you can do that. Or you can go out and you can finish this swim meet, and it may continue to be embarrassing. You may not make this

We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. Despite a disappointing performance at the twenty sixteen Olympic Trials, Missy still qualified to compete for the US. She would swim in three events in Rio. The night before her first event, Missy and her teammates celebrated at the opening ceremony, but when she returned back to her room in the Olympic village, she was hit with an overwhelming sense of dread.

I remember calling my parents the night before the meat started, and I was crying so hard I could barely breathe. I remember my dad, in particular, just repeating over and over again. He was like, honey, it is just a swim meat. It is just a swim meat. And I, like, I just couldn't like comprehend what he was saying. And I knew what he was trying to do, but in my mind, like it was so much more than that.

What I'm hearing from you is that your dad's telling you, Missy, this is just a swim meet, and you're thinking, no, this is my opportunity to defend my existence on the planet Earth.

Exactly. Yes, I'm like, this is not just a swim mate. This is who I am. And if I don't do this, why am I here?

What is my worth?

I have none if I can't do this and do it well. And so the next eight days were so tough. I didn't make the top eight in any of my individual events. I swam on the morning prelims relay of the eight hundred freestyle relay, and my time was not fast enough to put me on the finals relay.

But the way that.

Swimming works is if you are a prelim swimmer on a relay, even if you aren't in the group of four that wins the medal in finals, you still get that medal. So I still won a gold medal because my amazing teammates were able to bring home the golds in the eight hundred freestyle relay in Rio. I watched them do it in a beam bag chair on TV from the village, and that was how I won my fifth gold medal. That whole competition for me, truly was just survival.

I've looked back at footage and I've read interviews from that time, and Missy, I feel like you could hold a master class in the art of graciousness in face of defeat and failure and lost. It was so inspiring for me to see how you engaged with your teammates, with the press, with everyone that week. I mean, like we all aspire as human beings to act like that when we lose.

That means so much to me.

Truly, that is the highest compliment I can I could ever ask to receive, and that was what I decided to do there is I realized very quickly that I was not going to be an inspiration like I was in London by winning gold medals and breaking world records. I had always talked about the kind of person I wanted to be in defeat, and now was my chance to prove it and.

To actually be that person.

And if there was anything I could walk away being proud of from those eight days, I wanted it to be how I handled myself outside of the pool.

So you wrap up a very challenging week in Rio and you fly home. What were the days and weeks like after?

I mean, it's hard to put into words.

I was feeling so many different emotions and just ultimately just sadness and disappointment. We got home, and we landed back in the US and back in Colorado, and we were driving home and as we pulled into my neighborhood and pulled up to my house, all the kids of the neighborhood were standing there with signs and they had made cut out hearts and they had all written ways that I had inspired them in Rio, and they had

And by the way, what an important realization to thank you?

You know?

Yeah, I think that reflects something like even symbolically, which is so important, which is given again that your identity had been so tether to being a swimmer. What that tells me is that you were interested in treating not just Missy the athlete for the sake of improved performance, but Missy the person.

That's a beautiful way of putting it.

I don't think I've ever looked at it that way, but I did understand that it was Missy the person that was the most broken. And so it was a long,

Yeah.

Yeah, I can feel the intoxication of an epic comeback and what a satisfying narrative that would be. How did you handle the disappointment of because what I'm hearing from you is that you put in all the mental labor to get yourself back to a healthier place, but your body wasn't cooperating right, Your shoulder injury was not improving, And so how did you handle that frustration.

As an elite athlete?

And I just think as a person, I mean, you don't even have to be an athlete when your body is inhibiting you from doing something you feel trapped, you feel angry, you feel frustrated, because in my mind, there was nothing from a physical standpoint that I couldn't push through. And I tried so hard and I did everything possible. And it was a conversation that I had with my now husband at the time, and he said, honey, I want you to be able to throw our kids up

State that I had worked so hard to gain.

Yeah, and catch me up on life today. I mean, you have so many identities that you carry. You're a wife, you're a mother, you're a podcaster, you're an advocate. What is your relationship with swimming like today?

So I do have a beautiful relationship with swimming now, which I'm very thankful for. I still work heavily with the USA Swimming Foundation, which is the philanthropic side of USA Swimming. So giving back to the sport is incredibly important to me because it gave me so much, and so being able to give back working with the Foundation providing free and low costs from lessons to communities that need is just a huge piece of what I do

All has passed.

Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more conversations about what goes on inside the minds of elite athletes, Missy has a podcast of her own called Unfiltered Waters. We'll link to it in the show notes, and next week join me for my conversation with Paralympic gold medalist and US Navy veteran Brad Snyder. After a bomb left him blind, Brad found healing in the swimming pool.

Getting into the pool was the first time I felt like I could wrap my arms around normal. This was me. I was free, and I felt there's a future here and I'm going to find my way and it was the beginning of a real, incredible journey.

As always, we'd be so grateful if you can follow this show wherever you listen to podcasts and help spread the word, whether it's leaving a review or telling a friend about an episode you loved. It helps us keep making this show for you. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next week. A Slight Change of Plans is created, written,