Further Personal Information |
Residence |
Knoxville, TN, USA |
Sport Specific Information |
Club / Team |
Tennessee Aquatics: United States |
Further Personal Information |
Higher education |
Kinesiology - University of Tennessee: Knoxville, TN, USA |
General Interest |
Hobbies |
Watching TV, socialising with friends. (swimmingworldmagazine.com, 20 Nov 2020) |
Ambitions |
To compete at the Olympic Games. (swimswam.com, 10 Mar 2021) |
Sport Specific Information |
Training Regime |
She trains for four hours a day, split between a morning and an evening session. |
When and where did you begin this sport? |
She began swimming competitively at age nine. |
Further Personal Information |
Occupation |
Athlete |
Languages |
English |
General Interest |
Nicknames |
Maddy, Maddog (Instagram profile, 07 Dec 2021; Twitter profile, 04 Dec 2021) |
Sporting philosophy / motto |
"I'm someone who likes to learn in swimming. I still consider myself a baby in the sport and so being able to practise with [other elite athletes], learn different drills, getting to observe what the best in the world are doing [is] a great learning experience for me." (swimmingworldmagazine.com, 20 Nov 2020) |
Other information |
DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY
She attempted suicide in 2017 after experiencing mental health issues. She was in her junior year at the University of Tennessee at the time, so she left campus and stopped swimming to seek treatment. She returned to the sport the following year. "Every once in a while I will think about where I was in that very, very low point. It wasn't just swimming I didn't want, it was being alive I didn't want. It is kind of relieving and I'm very proud of myself that I came from there to be able to compete with the best in the world and being better in my swimming than I ever had been. It was such a rocky road. I stopped swimming for a while, left school, and came back. I didn't have a great end to my college career and stopped swimming for three more months and then I came back again and now I'm doing better than I ever have in the sport. I feel like you don't hear that a lot." (swimmingworldmagazine.com, 20 Nov 2020; madelinebanic.com, 20 Nov 2020)
GETTING FASTER
She recorded some of her best times in years in 2020, despite having just spent three months out of the pool due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "My training has changed a lot. I would say one of the biggest things with my training is that I've stopped trying so hard. It sounds counter-intuitive because with how I was raised, the harder you worked the more successful you would be. But for me and my body, and this took me a very long time to learn, clearly, I'm not someone who can just kill myself in practice every day and go out every single rep and just try and grind myself into the ground. My coach had told me for years that I was a Ferrari and not a truck." (swimmingworldmagazine.com, 20 Nov 2020) |
