After a swimming career, there’s a certain silence. Not the familiar, almost reassuring silence of an empty pool at dawn, but the quiet of a Tuesday morning when there is nowhere to go. There is no lane to claim. There is no split time to pursue. In every way, the transition from professional athlete to functioning civilian is a race unto itself for elite swimmers unlike in the water, no medal is awarded at the finish.
Although he seems to be managing it better than most, Nic Fink is aware of the emotion. After competing in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and placing fifth in the 200-meter competition, the Atlanta-based breaststroke specialist did something that shocked even his closest friends: he returned to school, obtained a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering began working as an assistant project manager at a utilities company while continuing his training. By his own account, he’s effectively living two lives at once it’s working. His coworkers hear him discuss project deadlines and morning workouts in the same sentence.
On Sundays, Melanie Margalis, his wife and fellow Team USA swimmer, assists him in preparing meals so that there is food available for the pool and the office. From the outside, it sounds like an exhausting balancing act. It seems to energize Fink.
It’s not the expected athletic discipline that makes his situation noteworthy. It’s the clarity of the mind. He is already aware that the pool chapter is coming to an end. He seems to be making peace with something that most athletes fight for years by anticipating that conclusion rather than dreading it. It makes sense: at its best, swimming is a profession. Few people are as passionate about their work as you are, so it simply doesn’t feel like one while you’re doing it.
The majority of swimmers spend years wandering between their athletic and professional identities. Lacey John, a former Olympian and national champion, once characterized the shift as a sort of identity freefall, an experience so similar to grief that a stronger word than “adjustment” is required. She organized panels at Arizona Athletics with the express purpose of assisting departing athletes with their next steps. Those who had arranged internships and polished their resumes weren’t the ones who found it most helpful. They were the ones who had struggled in the job market for a while, tried unsuitable things managed to make it through.
Swimmers may not be prepared for this by the sport itself. At the highest levels, maintaining a traditional job is practically impossible due to the early morning training schedule that characterizes competitive swimming, the limited window for recovery the compression of everything surrounding performance, all of which vanish overnight. After leaving the Chargers, former NFL lineman Nick Hardwick said something similar: fiscal years, not game weeks, govern the real world. It travels more slowly. It cannot be attacked in the same way as a sprint, which is regrettably the only mode that most elite athletes are familiar with.
Some swimmers swiftly land on their feet. The technical abilities that elite athletes develop discipline, pain tolerance the capacity to evaluate performance and make adjustments transfer fairly well to professions like engineering, finance, coaching medicine. Pierre le Coq, an Olympic windsurfer from France, went on to become a dentist. Knowing she needed a safety net, Canadian Olympian Lanni Marchant practiced criminal defense law while competing. The second career isn’t a consolation prize for these athletes. That’s the idea.
Others require more time. working as a swim school instructor. selling athletic wear. jobs that don’t feel worthy of a resume that used terms like “Olympic final” and “national record”. Even though that stage is uncomfortable, it may be a necessary part of the process a sort of professional trial and error that was never possible in competitive swimming. You put items on. The majority don’t fit. Something eventually does.
Swimmers of all skill levels can now participate in community sessions at the London Aquatics Centre, where Tom Daley and Ellie Simmonds once made history under Zaha Hadid’s famous wave-like roof. The Olympians who participated there have long since moved on. A few work as coaches. A few are in boardrooms. It’s likely that some are still figuring it out. Even after you’ve left the pool, there’s a feeling that it draws you back not necessarily to swim, but to be close to what shaped you. The majority of retired swimmers will tell you that they don’t miss the early mornings or the pain. They miss being aware of their precise position.