On winning the Olympic bronze at the 2012 Olympics, Hayden said, “I had dreamed my whole life of what it would feel like to stand on the podium with an Olympic medal hanging around my neck, but how it felt, in the end, was something entirely different.”
“When I’m standing up there, the world just sees the athlete. My mind and my heart are thinking about all the people who helped me get there. The most overwhelming feeling turned out to be gratitude,” he said.
A three-time Olympian, Hayden was the first Canadian to ever win an Olympic medal in the 100 meter freestyle race; moreover, he was the first human under 48 seconds without a bodysuit and is a 32-time Canadian champion. Hayden was the fastest swimmer in Canadian history who failed swimming lessons, yet he created Astra Athletica to inspire other people to persevere.
On his plans for the future, he said, “My plans are to continue to grow my apparel brand Astra Athletica and pursue my fine art photography. I am currently staying outside Beirut Lebanon with my wife and we are looking into opening a swim school here.”
Regarding the impact of technology on aquatics, Hayden said, “All one needs to do to see the impact of technology on aquatics is look at the progression of times. As long as technology keeps improving, records will continue to get broken.”
On his use of technology in his daily routine, he said, “I’m retired now so I don’t use technology anymore for myself, but when I was training because I’m a highly visual learner, visual feedback was extremely important. Using visual feedback allowed me to see the things that I couldn’t ‘feel’ when I was swimming. And since our eyes are mostly staring at a black line on the bottom of the pool, we are unable to see what our bodies are doing.”
He is drawn to TritonWear due to its easy. “I love how easy and unobtrusive to training it is to use. One of the worst things in a training set was taking your mind off the purpose of the set because you’re too busy thinking about making a piece of equipment work properly, which completely ruined my mindset for training,” he said.
TritonWear is known for giving swimmers AI-powered analytics. “With TritionWear, you can just turn it on, stick it under your cap and get back to focusing on the training while simultaneously giving your coach a whole arsenal of new information that you can go over with later to find those tiny pieces of improvements that a stopwatch alone wouldn’t see. In a race of hundredths, every hundredth counts,” he elaborated.
For young and aspiring swimmers, he said, “If you want to win, you have to first know how to lose. Don’t let early success fool you, because it is often the swimmer you are beating who is going to be the one who ultimately succeeds.”
He shared that the following was the best advice that he was ever given: “Do your best and have fun.” “That’s what my dad used to say before every race growing up. I went into every race with no expectation for others, only for myself,” he said.
Hayden defined the word success as “finding happiness.”
For his fans and supporters, Hayden concluded, “Thank you for believing in me. Whenever you are facing a challenge, I hope my journey has inspired you to never give up. Your challenge will become your superpower.”
To learn more about former Olympic swimmer Brent Hayden and his latest endeavors, check out his official website.
