Siobhan Haughey Setting Up For Show-Stealing 2024
Her status as a sporting pioneer in her home country has already been cemented, but perhaps Siobhan Haughey could be on the verge of stepping out of the shadow of the (mostly Australian) swimmers who have narrowly upstaged her in key moments.
Of course, Haughey has plenty reason to be proud of her silver medals, in the 200 freestyle and 100 freestyle at the Tokyo Olympics and then again in the 100 free at this summer’s World Championships. Haughey’s Olympic medals are two of the nine Hong Kong has ever won in any sport at the Olympic Games, and she is the only athlete from the country to win two.
Her shot at individual glory seemed to be imminent in June 2022, when Aussies Ariarne Titmus, Emma McKeon and Cate Campbell all skipped the World Championships, leaving Haughey as the gold-medal favorite in both her main events. Haughey had previously won both gold medals at the Short Course World Championships the previous December, breaking the short course world record in the 200 free in the process. But an injury forced Haughey to withdraw late from the Budapest Worlds, and she did not compete in any long course championship meets all year.
Fast forward one year, and she was considered a contender heading into the Fukuoka Worlds but once again overshadowed, with Titmus and McKeon back, young Aussie Mollie O’Callaghan having stepped forward and Canadian teenager Summer McIntosh quickly on the rise. Indeed, Haughey could not overcome that talent in the Worlds final of the 200 free.
In Fukuoka, Haughey swam a 200 free time of 1:54.96, just four hundredths slower than the mark in which she won Olympic silver two years earlier. Only six others in history had been faster: O’Callaghan, who set a stunning world record in that final, plus Federica Pellegrini, Titmus, Allison Schmitt, McIntosh and Katie Ledecky. Unfortunately for Haughey, three of those women were in the race, so Haughey had to settle for a hard-luck fourth-place finish.
Siobhan Haughey — Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
The 100 free turned out much better, however, as Haughey took second behind O’Callaghan in the final in 52.49. The 25-year-old finally benefitted from an absence as the swimmers who posted the second and third-quickest flat-start 100 free performances at the meet, Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom and Australia’s Shayna Jack, were not entered in the individual event. That allowed Haughey to secure her first-ever medal at a long course Worlds.
Strong results and a solid setup for the Paris Olympics one year away. But as the rest of the world reset and turned their attention toward those Games, Haughey still had business to attend to. The results have been some of the quickest in her career and 100-meter speed she had never before touched, even in her medal-winning moments.
Haughey won six medals at the Asian Games, including golds in the 200 free and 100 free. She took silver behind Zhang Yufei in the 50 free and also earned bronze in a rare appearance in the 50 breaststroke. Haughey helped a pair of Hong Kong relays reach the podium as well. Breaststroke, obviously, will not be a focus for Haughey on the world stage, but her times in her main events were plenty elite: her 52.17 in the 100 free clipped her Asian record by a tenth and broke a tie with Bronte Campbell for seventh all-time, and her 200 free time was 1:54.12, just off her Worlds effort.
And at the opening stop of the World Cup this weekend in Berlin, Haughey blasted a 52.02 100 free time, the 15-hundredth drop propelling her into third on the all-time list for the race. Only Sjostrom (51.71) and McKeon (51.96) have ever broken 52, and no one has done so since McKeon’s run to Olympic gold two years ago. Haughey now leads the logjam of 52.0s, having surpassed the lifetime-best efforts of Cate Campbell (52.03), Simone Manuel (52.04), Britta Steffen (52.07) and O’Callaghan (52.08).
🇭🇰 Siobhan Haughey in the Women’s 100m freestyle at the Berlin World Cup setting the third fastest performance in HISTORY 52.02 😱😱 #SWC23 pic.twitter.com/GD3UDrS3ud
— World Aquatics (@WorldAquatics) October 9, 2023
With more World Cup swims to come before she puts a wrap on her 2023 racing campaign, Haughey has moved into an envied but also pressurized situation as the specter of the next Olympics becomes more real in the eyes of athletes. Perhaps O’Callaghan should still be considered a half-step ahead of Haughey in the 100 freestyle landscape, especially given the Aussie’s come-from-behind success at two consecutive World Championships and her undefeated streak stretching back two years. But Haughey is very much in that gold-medal mix over two laps.
This development would have been a significant surprise, albeit a pleasant one, to the pre-Tokyo Haughey. Back then, the 200 free had been her main event, the one in which she had narrowly missed the podium at the 2019 Worlds. On the heels of her 200 free Olympic silver, Haughey admitted the pressure was off entering the 100 free and that she never would have predicted herself for a medal in that event prior to the meet.
Now, how things have changed as Haughey stares down the 52-second barrier, attempting to join an exclusive club before this World Cup series concludes. Doing so will put her even closer in the hunt for Olympic gold.
She’ll definitely be in the mix for the podium in Paris