Aussie Olympic legend Leisel Jones ‘felt nothing’ when she won gold in Athens

Olympic legend Leisel Jones has admitted she ‘felt nothing’ when she won her first gold medal 18 years ago, with the Aussie superstar opening up on the ‘toxic’ culture in the swimming team before she retired.

Jones announced herself to the Australian public in 2000 when she was named in the team for the Sydney Olympics at the age of 15 and became the first Aussie swimmer to compete at four separate Games when she went to London in 2012. 

The 36-year-old was tipped to reach the summit of her sport from a young age and delivered in Athens, taking gold in the women’s 4×100 metre medley relay, before winning gold again in Beijing in the women’s 100m breaststroke. 

However, in a surprising revelation, Jones says she ‘felt nothing’ when she was stood atop the podium and handed a prize every athlete dreams of. 

‘It is just so underwhelming,’ she said on LiSTNR’s A Life of Greatness – with Sarah Grynberg. ‘We have so many expectations of what it is going to feel like. We think we are going to feel fulfilled when this happens or when I get married I’ll feel like this, when I have children I’ll feel like this and when it doesn’t live up to that expectation we feel disappointed. 

‘I thought I would like myself more, I thought other people would like me more if I won a gold medal but none of that is true. It just means you have another piece of silverware in the cupboard that you’ll never look at again. 

‘Looking back on my career, I treasure my friendships that I have, the memories that I have so vividly, the laughing and the inside jokes that we had. I remember those things so vividly but winning an Olympic gold medal, I don’t remember any of it.’ 

Jones also opened up on the toxic culture surrounding the swim team as she approached the end of her career. The breaststroke champion claims that the rise of social media and endorsement deals saw a more individualistic mindset among her teammates. 

‘This was probably a collective where the generations were changing. I was coming towards the end of my career, people had come through that era where we had to work so hard, we had to fight our way onto the team. We had to have certain characteristics where we cared for our teammates, we had to look out for everyone,.

‘But then someone like me who is then 27 on their last team in London, the generation had changed and I could not keep up with that. I was trying to guide and help young athletes coming through who were like “we don’t care, we do it differently to you, it’s not that way anymore.”

‘Social media was a big thing that changed through that time, I remember in 2008 the iPhones coming out, the social media was changing everything, was changing how we interacted.  

‘We didn’t have that in 2004, the landscape was changing and I didn’t really keep up with it. It was so hard to be part of a generation that was completely different. I felt like I was being pushed out of that generation.’

Jones also stunned host Grynberg when she revealed that she had no adult chaperone when she first reached the senior team at the age of 14. 

‘No minder. Nothing. I just figured it out as I went along. It’s just crazy isn’t it, I look at 14 year olds now and say “is someone looking after you? are you allowed to be walking around unchaperoned?”

‘I truly was, I had people looking out for me, the senior people on the team would look out for me but I just winged everything. 

‘[I was] just trying to figure out myself, trying to figure out emotions, trying to figure out puberty, all those little things that you try and figure out about yourself but I was doing it at the Olympic games, it was just bizarre.’