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I N T E R V I E W
W I T H
S A R A H
S J Ö S T R Ö M
Photo: MIA Rossiya Segodnya/R-sport
E X C L U S I V E
Will Be Ready In Time”
Sarah Sjöström is the first Swedish woman to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming. At the age of 14, she won gold in the European championships and made her Olympic debut in Beijing. At 15, she broke her first world record. Now 27, Sjöström boasts 67 international podium honours for Sweden and holds six current world records, but a recent freak accident threatens her winning streak. By Kajsa Norman
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hen she first started, Sarah didn’t much care for swimming. “I started swimming when I was nine or ten years old after changing schools,” she remembers. A friend at her new school practiced the sport so Sarah tagged along, but after a few sessions she wanted to quit. She didn’t like getting water in her googles and thought the water was too cold, preferring to stay in the showers. “But my parents had already paid the fee for the semester, so they told me I had to keep going,” she recalls. As the weeks rolled on, she started making more friends and having fun. Swedish Press | July-Sept 2021 | 10
And soon the sport itself also became enjoyable. “The thing I love about swimming is that it’s easy to see progress. The pool is always the same distance, so it makes it easy to measure improvement.” When other parents expressed awe at Sarah’s speed, her mother started writing down her times and encouraged her to compete against herself. “That’s one of the things I enjoyed; going to competitions and beating my own personal bests,” says Sarah. And she progressed at mind-blowing rates. Just four years after taking up the sport, 14-year old Sarah was European 100m butterfly champion,
having beaten some of the world’s fastest adult swimmers. In 2016, Sjöström won an Olympic gold in 100m butterfly in Rio, setting a new world record of 55.48 seconds in the process. “There was a lot of pressure coming into that competition and I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle it. It was hard. My legs were shaking on the block, but I’m super proud of the outcome and how I handled all of it,” says Sjöström who also secured a silver medal and a bronze medal in the same Olympics. Knowing that she performed her best race ever under that kind of pressure helps her look to the future with