Paige Madden Returns to Nationals After 2022 Miss and Traveling the World
Within a three-month stretch in 2021, Paige Madden had just about everything go perfectly in her swimming career. One year after a cancelled NCAA Championships thwarted Madden’s chance at individual national titles and her Virginia Cavaliers’ shot at a team title, the senior swept the 200, 500 and 1650-yard freestyle at the NCAA Championships, winning all three race by more than a second. And Virginia did secure that elusive national crown, finishing 137 points clear of ACC rival NC State.
Less than three months later, Madden became an Olympian. At the U.S. Olympic Trials, she dropped three seconds from her best time in the 400 free prelims, and that evening, she swam a second quicker, overtaking Emma Nordin for second place on the sixth of eight laps and then holding off veteran Leah Smith at the finish. Two days after that, a third-place finish in the 200 free gave Madden a spot on the American women’s 800 free relay.
And at the Olympics, Madden finished seventh in the 400 free before swimming the second leg on the U.S. women’s 800 free relay. She split 1:55.25 for a team that earned a silver medal while eclipsing the previous world record.
It’s been almost two years since that stretch, which also included Madden’s graduation from Virginia, and it has taken her plenty of time to process what happened. In one sense, it’s career-defining. Madden said, “I’ve accomplished everything that I wanted to in the sport.”
Madden reflected further on her career trajectory on the way to that Olympic apex. “I never thought that I was going to make the Olympic team or get a medal and all that sort of thing until probably two years out from the Olympics when I really started to believe,” she said. “I just never really believed it until [Virginia head coach] Todd [DeSorbo] was like, ‘You can make this.’”
After it was over, Madden had to figure out what came next, both in the sport and in life, just like all college graduates in their early 20s. She rode the Olympic wave for a while, racing in the International Swimming League for the Tokyo Frog Kings and then representing the United States at the Short Course World Championships, earning individual bronze and a relay silver. But soon after returning home for the spring season, gearing up for long course competition while her former Virginia teammates were in the midst of NCAA competition, she realized she needed a change.
“I wasn’t a fan of just doing pro swimming,” Madden said. “I was going stir crazy. Swimming was my life, and I was really struggling to define myself as well. It’s like, ‘OK, I’m Paige, the professional swimmer.’ I was never meant to be a professional swimmer, even though I really love it. I love swimming. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it. It just kind of took over my life.”
In the pool, Madden’s 2022 season looked promising based on early-season results, but at the U.S. International Team Trials in late April, where she and Katie Ledecky were the only returning 800 free relay swimmers from Tokyo, Madden faltered. A ninth-place finish in the 200 free prelims all but ended her hopes of qualifying for the World Championships.
In the aftermath, Madden revealed she had been dealing with symptoms of Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disorder, and she had recently been diagnosed with the flu. Madden believes those illnesses as well as mental health concerns doomed her chances at those Trials.
“After Tokyo, I started to notice a flare-up in symptoms [of Hashimoto’s disease]. I was feeling really tired. I would come home from practice, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” Madden said. “I think part of it was maybe I was under-fueling a bit as well, but I think maybe it was just that my mental health was not in check. I was not seeing a therapist regularly like I had been in past years. I didn’t really lose access to it, but I had seen the same person at UVA, and then I graduated, and it’s just hard to find a provider.”
Even before her disappointing Trials, Madden had decided to make significant changes. Madden has always been adventurous — “I got the travel bug really bad,” she said — and after she enjoyed her time in Italy during her ISL stint, she decided to move to the United Kingdom to get a masters degree from Loughborough University. After Trials, she visited Loughborough for the first time and confirmed her decision to enroll in the clinical exercise physiology program. After that, she went on vacation.
Paige Madden after qualifying for the 2021 U.S. Olympic team — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
“I tried to make the best out of the situation,” Madden said. “I went and visited Loughborough and then went on vacation for 30 days, which I’d never done before. That was really great just to take my mind off things and not think about swimming, just unwind and get that out of my system. I never really took a break after Tokyo, so that was really good.”
She moved to Loughborough in September and resumed training after a four-month break, which meant an initial struggle to get back into a training routine, particularly with a higher-volume program than she had been used to. “I think I was way more out of shape than I anticipated,” Madden said.
Meanwhile, she prioritized her health. That meant making sure she was taking the proper dosages of her medications for Hashimoto’s disease. It meant finding a mental health provider to see regularly. And she made diet changes such as going gluten-free.
At Loughborough, Madden trains in a group that includes Irish distance star Dan Wiffen, Greek IMer Andreas Vazaios and Swedish sisters Louise and Sophie Hansson. Her graduate program has filled the need for intellectual stimulation while helping Madden accrue the hours she needs to apply to a physician’s assistant program in the future. And she eagerly embraced opportunities to travel even further.
“I kind of got started on the wrong foot, but at the same time, I was having a lot of fun,” Madden said. “I got to go to some really cool places for meets. I had never been to Scotland. I went to Barcelona. We went to training camp in South Africa. That was super cool. I think as the months went on, I got more and more in shape, so I was finally able to handle the training load. I would say it probably wasn’t until the last month-and-a-half or so that my mind caught up to, ‘OK, I can do this.’”
Madden, now 24, plans to return to Loughborough next fall, and she will write her dissertation next spring while in the final phase of training for the 2024 Olympic Trials. That will be the end of her professional swimming career but not her globetrotting habits. She hopes to work for a year as a clinical exercise physiologist before pursuing PA school, and that might take place in any English-speaking country. “Australia really appeals to me,” she said. “It’s just far away. I would like to go somewhere else.”
As Madden prepares for next week’s U.S. Nationals, her first meet in the United States in more than a year, the setup is strikingly similar to last year: a five-day selection meet that follows the same exact event lineup, and Madden has once again been swimming well in-season, albeit in far different locales than her American rivals. Her top times came at last month’s AP Race International in London, with a 1:57.62 in the 200 free and 4:08.66 in the 400 free, and she will be among the contenders in those events in Indianapolis.
This time, though, Madden feels less pressure as a result of her experiences over the past 14 months and some soul-searching over the last year that helped her become more secure in who she is. After all, she is still swimming because she enjoys the routine of training, being in shape and the social aspects that come with it, not because of any pervasive need to tie her identity to her racing times.
“I think more than anything, I just want to prove to myself that I’m still capable of doing what I’m capable of doing and that I can still work hard and put up a good performance,” Madden said. “Obviously I want to make the Worlds team, but I’ve been working a lot on my mindset that, ‘If I make it, I make it, and that’s great. And if I don’t, I don’t, and it’s not the end of the world because it’s happened to me before.’ I was fine, and I learned a lot from it. I have a backup plan now if I don’t make it.”
