For many athletes, all they have thought about for the last four years is the Paris Olympics. Daily schedules geared around one showpiece event, the buzz in training camps around the world reaching a crescendo in recent weeks.
Swimmers are left alone with their thoughts more than most. For Freya Anderson MBE, recently diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), such solitary headspace makes preparation for a potential life-changing occasion all the more challenging.
“It affects me day to day but it’s just something that I’ve learned to deal with,” Anderson tells i in a Zoom interview before she headed to France to begin her final preparations. “I’ve been taught a lot of techniques on how to deal with it and how to deal with anxiety.
“Like my coach says, I am never going just completely be anxiety free. It comes in waves. I’ve learned this year to really be kind to myself and acknowledge when I do feel like that and almost plan ahead for pinch points or when it might start to get worse, like in the run-up to the Olympics.
“I am aware I will be under a certain amount of stress, which you don’t think you are going to be under, but you actually are. Then it is about acknowledging why you’re feeling a certain way. And that’s something I’m still learning to do.”
Anderson has only opened up about her condition this year – the pre-Olympics timing being a coincidence, she says – but getting it out in the open has really helped, especially when it comes to dealing with the misconceptions around the condition.
Growing up, whether at the pool or at school, unwanted, intrusive thoughts would enter her head, like that something might happen to her family and if she didn’t touch her head it would make her “spiral out of control and freak out”.
Hearing cars go past in bed at night, she would sometimes think someone was going to break into her house.
Yet she got on with it, without seeking help, unaware she had OCD, given the stigma around the diagnosis focuses on what sufferers do to combat issues – clean obsessively or switching lights on and off – rather than the unwanted thoughts in the first place.
This was until British Swimming conducted a mental health awareness event in 2019, and everything became clearer. The clarity has also encouraged her to speak out, ensuring others don’t endure the same confusion she did as a youngster.
“One of the slides was about OCD,” Anderson continues. “And it was listing off all these traits of it and I never knew they were the traits. I was like ‘Oh, hold on a minute, I’ve been feeling like this’, so spoke to the doctor. And luckily, I was just really blessed to get all the help that I needed through British Swimming.
“I haven’t started speaking about it now by choice, but it’s a good thing to get it out there because for any young swimmers, or young athletes or anyone watching the Olympics it’s just probably nice to have someone to relate to because back when I was going through the first stages of it, I didn’t know what it was.”
Dealing with such issues on top of being an elite athlete has not hampered her career, however. Anderson heads to Paris an Olympic relay champion and nine-time European gold medallist already.
It is the relays Anderson will focus on again this time around, after a severe bout of glandular fever, which “wiped her out”, ensured she had to miss the Team GB Olympic trials. On top of everything else she has to deal with.
“It wasn’t ideal, but what can you do?” she adds. “In like February, March time, I made a really slow return to training, which was tedious.
“But eventually putting weeks back-to-back in training, which took so long to get to, kind of calmed me down. At the start, I was a bit agitated but I just tried to stay calm and accept it.
“Definitely a different way to start an Olympic year.”
Being part of such a strong-looking relay unit has also been somewhat of a panacea in difficult times.
While Team GB coach Bill Furness admits the best British medal hopes are likely to come from male competitors this summer, the women’s relay are strong contenders once again, after great success in Tokyo.
All of which helps Anderson get into the right frame of mind to go hunting for more gold in Paris.
“These relays are what we’ve really got our eye on,” Anderson insists. “I don’t want to jinx it, I just really want to do my best as an individual, part of a team firing at the same level, that would be really ideal. Everyone’s excited about it, the girls certainly are.
“We’ve got some new talent coming through since the last Olympics, so there’s definitely been like a shift in acknowledging where we are, where we’ve good, where we’re not so good. But the team, as a whole, is just ace.
“Everyone’s really supportive of each other, everyone’s rooting for each other, I think that’s something I’ve noticed. It’s just we’re so well gelled with each other. Once you have all that, we can go anywhere.”