FLOW STATE

After surviving a debilitating internal struggle, Olympic champion Chad le Clos wants to prove he's not on his final lap but at the start of a new chapter. Sink or swim, there's only one thing that matters: he's giving it his all.

- KIERAN LEGG

No athlete wants to be told to hit the brakes, but when you’re screeching towards the edge of a cliff—slowing down is your only option. For most of his life, Chad le Clos has only known one way of life: go full throttle. Whether he’s training or diving into the pool during the Olympics, the gold medalist swimmer’s MO has always been to go as fast as possible. And that drive, that determination to squeeze maximum distance out of every stroke has cemented the athlete as not just a hometown hero, but also as one of the greats.

But a tunnel-visioned approach, an obsessive dedication to the sport that has given him everything, meant he didn’t notice when his mental health started to crumble. By 2021, after dealing with a “series of traumas”, he woke up in a dark place. While he could thrive in the water, this pit of desperation was a foreign arena. Without the tools to claw back into a healthy state of mind, he wallowed in his low moments.

“I wasn’t enjoying anything anymore,” admits Le Clos. “Swimming, relaxing or even just playing videogames. Nothing could take my attention away from how I was feeling.”

He’s out of the woods now, wearing the battle scars of this mental battle proudly. Le Clos talks candidly about his struggles, willing to admit that for the first time in his life, he didn’t have the skill set to deal with a challenge.

“There were always glimpses of hope during that time,” he says. “Times where I could see the sun. But they were few and far between, and then it was right back into that dark place.”