Clegg on the moment he knew he had to go for gold in Paris

SWIMMING gave Stephen Clegg everything and took it away again.

It is an exhilarating physical activity but can be a cruel mistress at elite level, where alarms sound at 5am and lives are spent following the long black line.

Just ask Adam Peaty, Michael Phelps or any of the other mega-stars who have been brought to their knees by its unique demands.

Clegg has been caught in the swell of both sides. He experienced the very best of the sport when, as a teenager, it helped him deal with the ravages of a degenerative eye condition.

“I was definitely lost,” says Clegg, who called the Borders village of Newcastleton home. “As my condition worsened, I became more and more reclusive and shut myself away. I had no structure in my week, and I wasn’t happy with the way my life was going by the time I left school.”

Clegg reckons it could have been anything that scooped him up off the floor at the time. But exposure to swimming as a youngster and connections to coaches through his brother James made the decision simple enough.

“It wasn’t really intended to be anything competitive, it was a lifestyle choice to give me a bit of grounding,” he says. “It just built from there and my mental health and my swimming improved hand in hand over the course of the coming years.

“Swimming gave me space to figure things out, because when you’re in the pool, it’s complete silence. I felt quite overwhelmed in the world, but swimming gave me a peaceful environment.

“It challenged me to be alone with my own thoughts and challenged me socially a lot, too. All of a sudden I was surrounded by people who were going to ask me questions and try to push me. I fell more and more in love with the sport as I started to feel better about myself.”

Fast forward a decade and it is hard to believe you are talking to the same person when Clegg recounts the heartache of the Tokyo Paralympics.

Clegg’s passion for swimming and self-improvement saw him continually lower his personal best, lay waste to records, and arrive in Japan as the man to beat in the S12 100m butterfly.

The date – September 3, 2021 – had been imprinted in his brain for years and his target winning time was saved as the lock screen on his phone. Navigating the myriad of Covid tests required to make the Games, Clegg picked up bronze medals in the 100m backstroke and 100m freestyle to tee up a tilt at gold in his third and final event.

But when his appointment with destiny arrived, everything fell apart.

“On the day, I just felt this unbelievable stress constantly,” said

Clegg. “I swam the heat in the morning, and it didn’t go particularly well. I started panicking.

“One of my best friends messaged me saying, ‘That looked really easy’ and I said, ‘No, that hurt me, really hurt.’ I was three seconds off the pace I wanted to go.

“I spent the entire day stressing. I couldn’t work it out. The pressure just kept building and building and building throughout the day.

“When I stepped onto the blocks for that 100-butterfly final, it all became too much. Realistically, I didn’t actually want to swim it. I wanted to be anywhere else but there.”

The result was silver, a mere six-hundredths of a second behind Raman Salei of Azerbaijan.

Clegg can now clearly identify a primal fear of failure – fear of letting down family, coaches, and friends – based on how tightly bound swimming became to his sense of self. His plan was to win gold in Tokyo, represent Team Scotland at the Commonwealth Games and retire. When the first piece in the puzzle slipped, he had no doubt as to what to do next.

“The second I finished the race I decided, ‘OK, I’ve got another three years in me,’” said Clegg. “That result changed everything and kept me in the sport. Initially it was instinctive, the competitive element that didn’t want to lose and had to come back and do it again. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense in a lot of different ways.

“I do want to come back and win gold but there’s a lot more I want to achieve in sport aside from winning medals. I want to help other people try to get involved in sport, or at least find whatever it is that can be their safe haven, to have an anchor in their life where they can develop their character.”

Since Tokyo he has become a three-time world champion, winning back-to-back global titles in the 100m backstroke, and getting his hand on 100m butterfly gold too.

Now, Clegg talks of redemption and wants to climb onto the top step of that Paralympic podium at this summer’s Games in Paris.

He is setting the benchmark at three golds, although is conscious that key rivals from Russia and Belarus may yet be allowed to qualify and compete as neutrals.

“We’ve got some very, very big targets for Paris,” said Clegg. “Quite how that’s going to look is a bit of a roll of the dice. I’ve no idea whether they’re even still in the sport. I’m not stressing too much about what the rest of the world is doing. I think I’m in a pretty good position to be challenging for three golds, and I might add one or two events.”

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