What Mona McSharry did next: Resetting life after an Olympic medal
RESET: Mona McSharry and her rescue dog Luna at Arches National Park. Pic: Mona McSharry
Tuesday lunchtime in Knoxville, Tennessee. A Fountain City local park, to be precise.
Mona McSharry and Luna are out for a stroll. The absence of a leash is obvious. Luna, her seven-year-old American Pit Bull Terrier, is called after and whistled at throughout our conversation. An apology immediately follows each brief interruption.
Luna is a rescue. Providing dogs with a happier second chapter is a passion of Mona’s. She would love to someday open a rescue shelter of her own.
The rescue shelter dream is part of her open-ended future. Swimming is still her existence, but no longer is she cocooned within Olympic cycles. There are many different lanes she’d like to dip her toe in and glide down. There’s travel, there’s employment as a strength and conditioning coach, and there’s the notion to settle somewhere remote and run a farm.
Her future is undecided. Her future is free. She’s free.
The 2024 Paris Olympics were circled in the calendar for about the 10 years previous. Rio was not part of the plan and yet the then 15-year-old came within 0.9 of a second of 2016 Olympic involvement. Five years later in Tokyo, involvement in the 100m breaststroke final bettered even her own high expectations. Paris, all the while, was the career goal. Paris was perfect.
Of course, had Paris not been perfect and she'd been on the wrong side of the one-hundredth-of-a-second gap between bronze and fourth, her future would already be decided. She’d already be locked into LA 2028.
Had Paris not been perfect, there'd be no need for a lunchtime phone call to Knoxville, Tennessee. There’d be no need to pose the question: What did Mona do next?
Having skipped the fall semester to travel America’s West Coast, Mona returned to the University of Tennessee at the beginning of this year to begin a Master’s in Agriculture, Leadership, Education, and Communication. A funky one, as she says herself.
The Masters workload isn’t hectic, which is exactly as she wanted. Extending her stay in education was more about extending her stay with the college swim team. The Master’s will be done by December, at which point she’ll already be a couple of months into the 2025/26 swim season. And so the plan is to stay in America and stay in the pool until the summer of next year.
Beyond that? Who knows. She could retire there and then, or she could commit to another two years and plot a path to LA.
“I don't have an end date yet,” Mona begins.
“I am waiting for that ‘I am ready to be done’ moment to hit me. Haven't reached that yet. I do think it is coming, but honestly don't know when. It could be two years, could be four years.
“Come next summer, I’ll reassess and see what I want to do. Haven't really thought about the job thing yet because I'd like to stay free as long as possible. Eventually it would be fun to go the route of either a strength and conditioning coach in a sports setting, or settle down, have a farm, rescue loads of dogs, and somehow make money from that.”
Her attitude to the future is the same as to her present. There’s a contentment in no longer putting a rigid shape on her calendar.
“I am more relaxed and just letting whatever happens come,” says the 24-year-old.
That attitude is being applied to life both in and out of the water. Has been applied since she departed the five-ring circus with a bronze medal in her carry-on. Climbing the third podium step in Paris released her.
Any position below that and there’s no way she’d have been able to step out of the water for the subsequent five months and not get anxious about the metres and strokes being ceded to the world’s best.
“After Paris, I took five months off swimming completely. I knew this could go one of two ways. The first being, I never want to swim again and I like not swimming. Or, no, I do actually miss it and want to get back.
“To be honest, I didn't miss it while I was off. There was no moment where I was like, I really want to get back into the pool. But then when I did come back in January and started training with the team, it's been nice, albeit a little frustrating jumping in halfway through a season and trying to keep up with everyone because that’s just the person I am.
“Overall, it's been great, and I am not putting any pressure on myself to do anything big at NCAAs, or even this summer. Being so relaxed about that is probably because I achieved so much last summer, walking away with bronze, which was amazing, so I'm like, I am just going to give myself a break and enjoy it.
“I am just racing with the attitude of how fast can I go, how far can I go, and who can I beat next, which honestly is just really freeing.” Her recent performance at the Southeastern Conference Championships (SECs) vindicated this lighter approach. Despite limited preparation, her trademark back-end strength was located to deliver a fourth consecutive SEC gold in the 100 Breast.
She knows people on that side of the water will expect her to medal at the upcoming NCAAs. She knows people on this side of the water will expect her to medal at July’s World Championships. Olympic bronze puts you in a spotlight from which there is no hiding.
She is aware of all of the above. She is comfortable with all of the above. Such a full-picture mindset stands in contrast to the in-a-hurry young woman who didn’t allow herself a moment’s reflection, or rest, when arriving home from Tokyo three years earlier.
As she revealed to this newspaper in late 2023, she crippled herself with pressure following an eighth-place finish at her debut Games. Built up in her own head that she had to not only maintain this level but immediately push on. It mentally drained her. It dragged her to a point where she hated swimming, hated herself, and almost quit.
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“At that time, I was saying to myself, if I was a finalist at the Olympics, I have to be a medalist at Europeans. I have to be the best at this, this, and this. I put so much pressure on myself and then reflected that pressure on everyone around me, thinking they also expected that from me, when they didn't.
“Whereas now, I am going to race for a medal at Worlds, but I don't think I am going to make it a failure if I don't win one. I am not stacking bricks on myself any more.
“I definitely think the Olympic medal has freed me a little. That I achieved a medal, it is not that I am sitting back and going, ‘well, that's it now’. But I am more relaxed and letting whatever happens come.
“Having reached the level of Olympic medalist, we don't need to keep setting these high, high goals. I can just enjoy this. That's what this is about. It is about enjoying it. I was so focused last year, and still am focused as I've trained myself to be such a diligent athlete, but I'm also giving myself a lot of grace mentally, more so than physically, which has been helping me a lot.”
Mental space doesn’t come much more plentiful than the sprawling National Parks of Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion.
Post-Paris, there were two glorious weeks of Sligo homecomings and giving back to the communities and people who gave so much to her on the long road to the French capital.
Once that box was ticked, she got to disappear. She got to be Mona the adventurer.
Herself, her best friend Róisín, and Luna packed into a camper van and snaked up America’s West Coast. Sixty-six days of small-town beaches and big-ass hikes. Skiing in Colorado to knitting on the side of the road in God knows where. No punctured tyres, just a leaky tap. The daughter of a plumber effortlessly sorted that hiccup.
“Getting to create our own timeline was unbelievable. Wake up when you want, go to sleep when you want, cook what I want, workout when I want, which wasn't a lot. I felt guilty at the start and was telling myself I can’t be unfit going back into my college season, but I got to a place where I was like, this is a time when I can sleep in or sit outside with my cup of coffee in the middle of nowhere. Couldn't have asked for a better post-Olympic transition.
“Now that I am back training, and training well, I don't regret it. Not that I regretted it anyway, but there is always a part inside saying, I am not as fast as everyone else because I took so much time off. But it was so worth it, and I will catch up eventually.”
She’ll catch up because she won’t chase. In this final leg of her career, she knows what works and doesn’t. Revealing all she did on the road to finding that sweet spot was less for her and more to inform those coming after that you don’t always swim in straight lines.
We leave her and Luna back to their lunchtime stroll. What Mona did next is open-ended and stress-free. Exactly as she wants it.
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