Pool guys at risk of sinking to bottom

This has not been a good few days for the fraternity of Olympic swimmers. Last Friday, Klete Keller, who won two Olympic gold medals, was indicted on additional charges over his alleged role in the storming of the US Capitol.

Then on Tuesday, Australian Scott Miller, who won a silver

Hearing: Double Olympic gold-medal winner Klete Keller appears before a District of Columbia court after being charged over his alleged role in the storming of the US Capitol and a bronze medal at the 1996 Olympics, was arrested, following an investigation into a £1.1 million methamphetamine ring. Both episodes involve dark comic elements. Video footage of the police raid on Miller’s home show his pet pug excitedly greeting the officers, who allegedly uncovered meth hidden inside candles.

Keller, meanwhile, was one of the most conspicuous rioters, being 6ft 6in as well as deciding to wear his official Team USA jacket complete with United States Olympic Team patch on his sleeve. The FBI did not take long to identify him.

There is nothing humorous about the paths that led both men to these points. Keller’s defining moment came at the 2004 Olympics in the final of the men’s 4 x 200 metres freestyle relay. He swam the anchor leg against Australia’s Ian Thorpe, the world’s best freestyle swimmer at that point. Thorpe ate into Keller’s lead, but the American held him off.

That was as good as it got for Keller. His form declined, although he did win another gold medal as a relay alternate at the 2008 Olympics, and he struggled to adapt to life after swimming. In 2014, he split from his wife, lost his job and ended up living in his Ford Fusion, sleeping in the car park of a local Walmart.

Miller’s story is equally dark and depressing. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, he was the hot favourite to win the 100m butterfly event after setting an Olympic record in his heat. However, his Russian rival, Denis Pankratov, exploited a loophole by gliding underwater for the first 35m of the final. In backstroke and breaststroke you are not allowed to stay underwater for more than 25m, but no such rule applied to the butterfly, and Pankratov beat Miller to the gold.

Miller also won bronze in the medley relay, but his life quickly unravelled after the Games.

The following year he was thrown out of the Australian Institute of Sport for missing training sessions and was banned by swimming’s world governing body, Fina, for testing positive for marijuana – but he was named bachelor of the year by Cleo magazine and, perhaps, this prestigious nomination led him into a world in which he married television star Charlotte Dawson in 1999. Their marriage lasted only a year, though, and Dawson was found dead in 2014 following a long battle with depression.

I have long held a highly unscientific theory that swimming is the most isolating and gruelling of sports. This was based on personal experience of rising at 5.30am at weekends to attend training sessions when I was 10. Then I was told that if I wanted to eventually represent my county, Kent, I would need to do this during weekdays and after school too. To my parents’ eternal relief, I said no thanks.

Other sports require similar levels of dedication, but even in such gruelling events as longdistance running and rowing, you have external stimuli and other people to share your pain. In the pool, you are alone with just never-ending blue in front of you as you plough length after length. A 2008 study found that elite swimmers, at 14, were expected to swim 40 miles a week, the aerobic equivalent of running 160 miles. This is on top of school.

Come race day, the smallest mistake from a dive to a turn is enough to spell defeat. I can only imagine the number of swimmers who have missed out on a place in the Olympics by the length of a fingertip. Those who reach the podium are guaranteed no passport to riches. Very few athletes leave swimming with much to fall back on, financially.

Even the highest-profile swimmers seem to be fish out of the water upon retirement. Ryan Lochte had his infamous trip to a Rio petrol station, Thorpe has struggled with depression and Michael Phelps, the most successful swimmer of all time, went into rehab after two drinkdriving arrests. Of course, plenty of athletes across all sports struggle without the structure and sociability that their sports provide.

There are thousands of swimmers who don’t fall by the wayside, but I wonder if there is something in the water that peculiarly impacts elite swimmers. Maybe it is the chlorine.

At 6ft 6in tall, and wearing an official Team USA jacket, it did not take long to identify Keller in the Capitol