“I wasn’t allowed to get my heart rate up at all—it was really about giving my body total rest so that it could just continue to try to recover and get healthy,” she said on Unfiltered Waters.
She (and her doctors) still weren’t sure if she’d ever be able to perform at the level she had before. Once an athlete has had OTS once, their risk of tipping into it again increases, they told her.
Patience and self-compassion were also key to her recovery.
After Tokyo, Manuel heard even more “negative noise” about her performance. “The only way I knew how to pick myself back up was to be proud of what I’ve done, and that’s typically something that I don’t do,” she said on Unfiltered Waters. She took time to acknowledge the difficulties she’d been through that year, but also her value as a daughter, friend, teammate, and person. Seeing a sports psychologist helped, as did journaling or “word dumping,” as she described it to The Ringer.
She’s also leaned on her support system. In addition to her parents, who have always stood by her, she married her husband Denzel Franklin in 2022. “I think what has helped in being in the relationship is knowing that my priority isn’t just swimming; he also is my priority as well,” she said on Unfiltered Waters. “That allows me to in some ways balance swimming better.”
She eased back into training little by little.
In order to help hang onto that new mindset, Manual changed up her environment and moved to Arizona to train with a pro group coached by Arizona State’s Bob Bowman. There, she found coaches and teammates who helped her have fun and appreciate each small step forward.
Her workouts started with just 15 minutes of continual swimming; she gradually stretched that out to 30, The Ringer reports. The goal was to eventually get her up to the hour mark, but Bowman was careful not to rush it.
It took two years of training for her to feel like herself again.
Manuel’s first competition back was in January 2022. But it wasn’t until the US Open in December 2023, where she broke 54 seconds in the 100 freestyle again, that she felt she was getting closer to her previous level.
On Unfiltered Waters, she called the performance a “breakthrough.” “It was the first time in a while that I felt confident racing,” she said.
She carried that feeling through the 2024 Trials. Although she again failed to qualify in the 100-meter freestyle, she earned her spot on the 4×100 freestyle relay team and repeated her victory at the 50-meter freestyle.
She doesn’t necessarily call Paris a comeback.
Yes, she’s returning to the Olympic Games in a far better place, mentally and physically. But when Unfiltered Water hosts Katie Hoff and Missy Franklin, fellow Olympic medalists in swimming, asked her for a word to describe her current motivation, Manuel said she prefers one her mom gave her: unfinished.
“It speaks definitely to the swimming goals I have, but also just me as a person,” she said. “There’s always more to do, there’s always more to accomplish and work on and we won’t be finished until it’s our time.”
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