How Paige Madden Climbed Back To The Top Of The USA Swimming Scene

It looked seamless when Paige Madden likely qualified for her second straight Olympic team Saturday night. She was in second place behind Katie Ledecky for the entire race, and there was a full 4.81 seconds between her and Jillian Cox, the third place finisher. A year ago though, her feat would have seemed impossible to believe, even for herself.

The issues first started in April 2022, when Madden failed to qualify for the 2022 World Championships team. In the leadup to the International Team Trials, she was seriously affected by Hashimoto’s disease — an inflammation of the thyroid gland in one’s neck — which gave her intense fatigue and hindered her ability swim to her full potential. She had been struggling with the disease for over a decade at that point, but it didn’t start seriously impacting her swimming career until then.

“Two years ago, I wasn’t sure if I was ever gonna be able to compete again.” Madden said. “I was struggling. I couldn’t even finish a two hour practice.”

“The dosing of my medication was wrong and I just struggled mentally and physically.”

In addition, Madden was struggling with her identity as a pro swimmer then. She graduated from the University of Virginia in 2021, and spent the 2021-22 season training at the university as a pro. She was a student-athlete all her life, and suddenly, her entire career was about swimming.

To deal with those struggles, Madden left Virginia and moved to Loughborough, England in the fall of 2022, where she pursued a master’s degree at Loughborough University and train with their pro group. There, she benefitted from living a more balanced lifestyle.

“I really struggled my first year as a pro swimmer because my whole life I have been a student-athlete and then all of sudden ‘I’m Paige, the swimmer, that’s all that I do,'” Madden said. “It really wore on my self worth. I think going abroad and getting my master’s kind of took the edge off — I’m a student athlete again, that’s awesome.”

Madden’s experience at Loughborough helped her fall in love with swimming again, and she slowly got back in shape. However, after a year of training in England, she was still nowhere near the same swimmer that she was when she made the 2021 Tokyo Olympic team. She practiced with Virginia in the three weeks before 2023 U.S. Nationals, but struggled through taper because her training plan at Lougborough was so different from what UVA did. At Nationals, she finished fourth in the 400 free and 16th in the 200 free — still far and away from making the World Championships.

However, Madden realized after coming back to Virginia that she wanted to stay and train the United States alongside mostly other Americans. In the summer of 2023, she moved to Tempe, Arizona to train under Bob Bowman at Arizona State. Then, when Bowman was named the head coach of the University of Texas this April, she followed him to Austin.

“This year I just wanted to be consistent, I wanted to be with U.S. swimmers, and wanted to be in what felt like a team environment, which I felt like I got with [Bowman’s] pro group,” Madden said.

Madden didn’t mind the quick turnaround of moving from Tempe to Austin, or the multiple training changes she made in three years. She citied experience with sudden change — like when she committed to Virginia under Augie Busch but got coached by Todd DeSorbo for her entire career — as a factor that helped her acclimate to moving around so much.

In addition, it was in her time training under Bowman when Madden began hitting her stride again. This May, she hit her first personal best time since the Tokyo Olympics swimming the 400 free (4:03.02), and then lowered that best time (4:02.08) again during Olympic trials. She then swam a best time in the semi-finals of the 200 free (1:56.36) on Monday, and has a shot at making Paris either individually or on the 4×200 free relay Tuesday night.

Madden didn’t think she could be at an Olympian-level height ever again. But she persevered, and it paid off.

“I never thought that I was gonna a best time ever again after Tokyo,” Madden said. I think it just shows that I can do hard things, and that hard work pays off. And I’ve worked really, really hard this year.”