Australian Olympian Scott Miller on jail, dependancy and returning to the water

There was a time not way back when Scott Miller needed nothing greater than to be again in jail, sweeping the ground of a fitness center.

When the previous Olympic swimmer was granted parole in June 2024, after serving greater than three years at two regional prisons in NSW for drug-related offences, life wasn’t what it was once.

Freedom, he quickly found, was more durable to navigate than jail.

“When your case has been thrown through the media, you just think there’s a million eyes on you and you’re being judged,” Miller says. “You’re just really paralysed with fear when you get out.

“It was harder to get adjusted back into the community after prison than it was going in. It’s a really weird feeling, and I wasn’t in there that long. I imagine it’d be worse the longer you’re in.

“I remember being out for three months wishing I was back in there. I can’t tell you how hard life is when you get out.”

Miller is talking publicly for the primary time in additional than a decade, since an emotional 60 Minutes episode in 2014 wherein he was confronted about his fall from grace.

There is a cause why Miller is able to discuss. The sport that made him well-known is now serving to rebuild his life.

The 51-year-old is happier than ever and fortunate to be alive.

Twenty years in the past, Miller overdosed and ended up on life help in a Manly hospital. His once-glamorous life had collapsed into dependancy and chaos after his swimming profession ended.

There are uncomfortable realities that Miller has to stay with. He is a convicted drug trafficker, former ice addict and former escort company proprietor.

Three many years in the past, Miller was additionally one in every of Australian sport’s greatest names – a teammate to Kieren Perkins and Susie O’Neill, topped Cleo’s Bachelor of the Year in 1997, and for a time residing on the Newtown dwelling of his mentor, Alan Jones.

“I’m not walking around proud as punch,” Miller says. “I still feel a lot of shame around what’s happened and what I’ve done in my life, but you can’t let it cripple you.”

Between 2004 and 2025, Miller couldn’t carry himself to swim a single lap.

For at the very least 1214 of these days, between 2021 and 2024, he was unable to.

“There are no pools in prison,” he says.

Swimming had turn into a supply of ache for Miller. This was the person who gained a silver medal within the 100m butterfly on the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, an Australian hero of his time.

Miller completed simply behind Russia’s Denis Pankratov, who infamously swam underwater for a lot of the opening lap, utilizing a tactic that’s now outlawed.

Those 26 hundredths of a second that separated gold and silver – concerning the time it takes to blink – had an infinite and devastating influence on Miller’s life.

So when Miller arrived alone on the Andrew “Boy” Charlton Aquatic Centre in Manly final October – three kilometres from the hospital the place docs saved his life in 2006 – and hauled himself again into the water, even he didn’t understand how it could really feel.

Miller swam about 500 metres – nothing in contrast with the kilometres upon kilometres he as soon as churned out per session at his peak. It felt good.

“I wanted to feel what it was like to be alive again and back in the pool,” Miller says. “Once I dived in and swam for the first time, it was therapeutic and I enjoyed it.

“I had so much time to think while I was in there [in prison]. I was hoping to be out at age 50, and I got out at 49. You want to reset and start again … like turning back time.”

After making an attempt to trace Miller down, he rings from an unknown quantity. He speaks candidly, cracking the odd joke, revealing {that a} comeback of types started in his jail cell.

Miller was arrested in 2021 at his waterfront Sydney dwelling in Rozelle and later pleaded responsible to supplying a big industrial amount of methamphetamine, supplying a industrial amount of heroin and taking part in a felony group.

Court paperwork revealed Miller met with a person who positioned a bag of candles containing $2 million price of ice in his automotive.

“You’ve got to go out there and face the music,” Miller says. “This is the way it was. Here I am now.”

In October final 12 months, 16 months after being launched from jail, Miller bought a pair of swimming goggles for the primary time in years. In a earlier life, a sponsor would have sorted him out.

In the grips of his dependancy and a partying way of life, following the black line of a pool had turn into Miller’s concept of hell. He had not swum since and remembers the date clearly: February 11, 2004.

His silver medal in Atlanta haunted him, and lacking qualification for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, by harm, solely deepened it.

Had Miller touched the wall forward of Pankratov, the trajectory of his life might have been vastly completely different.

“I didn’t want to swim. I didn’t like the feeling. It was painful and I used to get really anxious,” Miller says.

“To then do it again after so many years and ease that pain, the next time it wasn’t as hard to get to the pool. I wanted to learn why this was so hard for me. I kept confronting it and breaking it down, wanting it to go away, and it did. The enjoyment of the sport came back slowly over about six months.”

Last month, on the Brisbane Aquatic Centre, Miller discovered himself again in lane 4.

Miller broke the 100m butterfly Olympic report 30 years in the past in lane 4 of the Atlanta pool throughout a preliminary warmth.

With quick gray hair and the Olympic rings nonetheless tattooed on his chest, Miller stood behind the blocks for the lads’s 50m butterfly occasion on the Masters Swimming Australia National Championships.

Masters swimming attracts everybody from Olympians nonetheless chasing quick occasions to retirees seeking to keep match and social.

Those in attendance knew Miller’s race was vital. He dived in and emerged a nationwide report holder within the males’s 50 to 54 12 months class.

His time of 25.41 was effectively under the earlier nationwide report of 26.03, however exterior the world report of 24.96. Although Miller didn’t contact the wall first, the competitor who beat him, Ashton Baumann, was a lot youthful and in a special age class.

Miller has registered with the Warringah Masters Swimming Club on Sydney’s northern seashores and trains thrice per week within the pool.

The Monday, Wednesday and Friday classes give him construction and routine.

His shut buddy Chris Fydler, a part of Australia’s gold medal-winning 4x100m freestyle relay workforce in Sydney 2000, watched him swim in Brisbane.

“I didn’t really tell many people about it and didn’t know if I was going to do it,” Miller says. “I thought I’d like to do a 50 butterfly at 50 just to see how fast I could go. I wasn’t doing a lot of swimming, but I was improving. I thought, ‘This is weird, I wonder how fast I could swim?’ I definitely know I can swim a lot faster.

“Just the whole experience and warming up and putting on your ‘jammers’ [was new again]. I forgot how tight they were.

“That was great to have a mate [Fydler] there. When you have friends from sport at that level, it’s a different kind of friendship. It makes you realise what’s real and what’s not in life.”

While in jail, Miller accomplished a level in constructing building administration and educated every time he may, shedding 26 kilograms. On pool deck, the bodily indicators of that work had been apparent, with veins protruding prominently from his arms.

“People ask me what prison was like,” Miller says. “Think of the Australian Institute of Sport [in Canberra] but with no women or pools.”

“Being in reasonable shape out of prison helped. I fit in pretty well with an institutionalised environment. I became a gym sweeper in my last few years, so I was in the gym a lot in prison. I got to train all day. I made the most of my time in there and got pretty fit and lean. I was doing weights, rowing and on the assault bike. I went in at 125kg and came out at 99kg.”

Miller says he’s a “lot calmer and more relaxed” than the person who entered jail. He is his aged mom’s carer and has a job with Alcohol and Drug Awareness Australia, flying to Melbourne thrice a month to present talks to younger tradies concerning the penalties of dangerous selections.

“I’m completely honest when I speak to them and don’t make any excuses,” Miller says.

“I let them know how quickly bad choices can be dressed as solutions. You’ve really got to have contingencies in place in life and not put all your eggs in one basket. Reflecting on my life, I did a lot of that, and I think it didn’t set me up well.

“There are organisations that support the transition from sport into normal life. They weren’t around. You need to get ready for that before it’s all over. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life for sure.”

More than a decade after his emotional tv confession – “I am a drug-taker” – didn’t halt his spiral, Miller says this comeback is completely different. Those near him imagine he’s a special particular person and enjoyable to be round.

“It seems like this is his happy place,” says Masters Swimming Australia president Jane Noake. “It’s part of getting his life back together. If you hadn’t known the history, you wouldn’t have known the difference.

“He was very popular on pool deck. I haven’t heard any negative feedback. Anything that’s gone on before is irrelevant to me.”

Miller provides: “I haven’t had many negative comments, at least to my face. Everyone’s been pretty nice and accepting.

“I don’t think I’m going to put swimming down. I’m enjoying it. I’m just going to keep going.”

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