Pressure of the present a worry for Hannah
HANDS up if you miss the Nokia 3210. Around 160 million of those monochrome mobiles were shifted back in the days before the iPhone was king. Positively Jurassic compared to the modern-day souped-up pocket calculators that really can do everything, including sticking the kettle on. No apps, no pet videos. Simpler times indeed.
‘The battery life lasted for two weeks,’ Hannah Miley says with positive enthusiasm. With good reason. These contraptions were (gasp!) merely for phone calls.
‘There was no Facebook, no Twitter, no pressure to put pictures up and get loads of likes.’
Scotland’s stellar swimmer for all seasons fears the next generation hoping to make a splash might sink under the strain of an app overload.
Not that the 28-year-old, a relative OAP in a youthful sport, is a technophobe even if her own stream of musings will be placed on pause when she competes in the individual medleys when the European Championships begin this week at Glasgow’s Tollcross Centre.
Yet there is a danger, she says, that providing the kind of witty posts and wondrous pictures which can deliver riches and relevance can mask the oftendark realities of pushing mind and body to the very brink.
‘You do so many difficult things as an athlete that people don’t realise about,’ declares Miley.
‘You go to competitions. You have good days in training. But no one sees the days when you’re struggling. Or when you come back from an Olympics and have the post-Olympic blues and feel incredibly low.
‘On social media, people tend to post when they’re happy and it’s all going well. That’s what gets you the likes and the follows rather than the negative stuff. People seem to want to put out this happy life when it isn’t always wonderful.’
It’s a double life best articulated of late by her longtime team-mate Lizzie Simmonds, who spoke with searing honesty about the post-traumatic stresses of singularly pursuing gold and then discovering what follows can feel cheaper than glitter.
‘I hugely commend how she’s been so articulate about how she’d dealt with it,’ continues Miley.
‘Sport is one of the best things in the world but it is important that athletes look after themselves mentally, as well as physically.’
Which is why, on her frequent workshops in schools and swimming clubs, the three-time Olympian is careful to strike a balance between selling the fantastical possibilities of an athletic career with laying bare the punishing sacrifices demanded.
She laughs: ‘You don’t want to stand up there and go: “Don’t do it kids!”.’
However in going to her first Commonwealth Games at the impressionable age of 17, she was compelled to learn quickly that for every peak will come a trough and that the key to survival is to never get either too high or too low.
‘If you’re in an Olympic final, the range of emotions between coming first and fourth is huge,’ affirms Miley, who sustained the agony of achieving the latter in the 400 metres Individual Medley at Rio 2016.
‘You could be excited. Or you could need picked up off the floor. It might depend on what the media write about you. They may support you or slate you. Whereas
if you do well in an exam, you might be really happy but it won’t be posted all over social media.’
Even hard work is no guarantee of a five-star review, she tells them. Miley, whose lone European long course title was acquired in 2012, has accumulated 20 medals from major swimming championships even if that trove does not include an Olympic gong.
Should a young hopeful never come close to the lowliest of bronzes, the efforts expended can still retain immense value, she insists.
‘There may be a time when they come across something in their life where they call upon those kind of experiences,’ says Miley. ‘Sport might be just sport but there is so much you can get from it.’
After Glasgow, where she is slated to swim two events as part of a strong British team, she will journey home to Aberdeen and voluntarily dip toes into choppier waters.
When her father and coach Patrick was a helicopter pilot hopping out to the oil rigs, he was required to endure a biennial visit to a simulator to practice how to cope if he were forced to ditch in the North Sea.
Miley will have a go of her own to raise money for a neo-natal care unit, with two seats up for sale to accompany her on the submergence. Out of her comfort zone by some distance.
‘I have a phobia,’ she reveals. ‘I struggle to watch films that involve small spaces and water.’
It will be filmed by her husband-to-be Euan. Expect the snaps and shares in glorious technicolour to come thick and fast. All in a good cause. The yin and the yang of this post-Nokia age.
It’s so important athletes look after themselves mentally, as well as physically