SINGAPORE — When Tao Li came out of the pool at the London Aquatics Centre after exiting the semi-finals of the women’s 100m butterfly at the 2012 Olympics, she already knew her dream of achieving an Olympics medal was as good as over.
Yesterday, the 26-year-old launched her own swimming academy — the Tao Li Swimming Club — at the Temasek Club. She is also completing her studies in business management at the Singapore Institute of Management in her spare time.
While this new direction in life is exciting, Tao Li cannot help but look back at her swimming career with a tinge of regret.
“Missing out on an Olympics medal and a hat-trick of Asian Games gold medals in 2014 (she took silver after winning in both the 2006 and 2010 editions) are my biggest regrets. But, in life, things don’t always go your way,” she said, while reflecting with TODAY on her 12-year swimming career. “You are given certain things in life, and you make the most out of those.”
Wearing her hair in shocking blonde, the 1.60m-tall swimmer also talked about having to “train doubly hard” because of her lack of height, and also having a “tough two to three years settling down” in Singapore in the beginning.
“Everything wasn’t easy, and sometimes people don’t see what goes on behind the success. There were feelings of fear, nervousness, happiness, sadness, and frustrations en route to getting where I am today,” she said.
Tao Li claimed that having three coaches in four years — Peter Churchill, Barry Prime and Ian Turner — leading up to the London Olympics disrupted her preparations.
“I was also distracted during the peak period of my career from 2005 to 2008. Sometimes when you have achieved good things, you lose focus a little,” she said.
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