Leanne Smith Returned To The Pool On Her Own Terms, And Now She’s Swimming Faster Than Ever

Leanne Smith was finished with swimming after the Paralympic Games in Paris last year.

It was her second trip to the Games, and she came home with four medals, including a pair of individual gold medals. Her career, she said, felt complete.

“I had checked everything off, and more,” said Smith, 36, from Beverly, Massachusetts. “So I was like, this is it. I’m good. I’m done.”

Yet there she was in Indianapolis for the Para Swimming World Series in April, breaking three world records and competing for a spot on the U.S. team that will travel to the Para Swimming World Championships in Singapore later this year.

So how did she get from being done with swimming to setting world records seven months later?

On her own terms.

Making it to Paris for her second Paralympics was a dogfight, Smith said. She was rushed to the hospital in August 2022 for difficulty breathing. She ended up in the ICU, and four months later she was still nowhere near being ready to return to the water. She eventually did get back to the pool, and her experience in Paris was beyond what she imagined.

Three years after winning a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle S3 at the Tokyo Games, Smith got “redemption” in Paris by winning gold in the event. She added silver medals in two mixed relays — the 4x50-meter freestyle and 4x50-meter medley — then, on the last day of competition, won another individual “bonus” gold in the 50-meter freestyle S4. She came into the event seeded eighth and out-touched the others in such a close race that she didn’t know she’d won until she got to the side of the pool.

“It was such a cool, special moment, and having (coach Dave Modzelewski) there as part of the Team USA staff as well is something I’ll never forget,” Smith said. “The 100 was what we hoped and trained for and put focus and energy into, so we were hyped about that gold. So to round out with a bonus gold in the 50 was icing on the cake.”

After Paris, Smith was greeted by family and friends at the airport and had an escort home by the local fire and police departments. That was only the beginning. There were official citations from the Massachusetts House of Representatives and Senate. Oct. 18 was declared “Leanne Smith Day” in Beverly. The YMCA where she trains held a celebration. A local ice cream shop even created a flavor in her honor, “Leanne’s Gold,” consisting of vanilla ice cream with golden Oreos, cookie dough and a “golden river of caramel.”

But being at the Y for the celebration was as close as Smith got to a pool for a long time. She didn’t even want to smell chlorine, let alone take laps. She was burned out even before Paris, and once she let herself acknowledge those feelings she was sure she didn’t want to compete anymore.

Yet unlike past years, when she was forced out of the pool due to health, this pause was on her own terms. By mid-November she wanted to get back in the water.

But slowly, and with no commitments.

Maybe she wasn’t done after all, but she wanted to explore her options at her own pace.

Smith and her coach set a plan to taper back into training, and she gave herself the month of December to decide if she wanted to compete again. It didn’t take long to catch the bug, but this time Smith and her coach wanted to keep to a schedule that would protect her from burnout. She trained two days a week at first, then added a third day in January.

When the opportunity came up to compete at the Para Swimming World Series in Barcelona in March, she took it. Smith had recovered from a cyst on her biceps and was getting back into backstroke, breaststroke and the individual medley, and she wanted to get some updated times to work with going into Indianapolis and trials for world championships.

“That was the goal, to really just keep the joy that I was having and finding in most practices alive and see if it translated into competition as well,” she said. “Going into Barcelona I had no expectations, no idea what my times would be, especially looking at what I was doing for training.”

She came home with five medals, three of them gold.

The World Series meet in Indianapolis — which served as the lone selection event to make the U.S. world championships team — was even better. Smith won all five of her events — the 50-meter, 100-meter and 200-meter freestyle (racing for the first time in several years), plus the 50-meter backstroke and 50-meter breaststroke — and set S3 world records in all three of the freestyle events.

For Smith, it’s evidence that she can train at a level that feels good physically and mentally and still have success.

“You don’t have to do x, y, and z because everyone else is,” she said. “They’re on their program and path, and we’re in our own world as a lower class where my body is constantly changing. My condition is progressive and it’s continually throwing curveballs of how I can move. What we’re doing for me specifically is working, and it’s a good system that’s dialed into what my needs are. It’s OK if it looks different than the higher classes. It doesn’t mean I can’t produce good quality swimming. Sometimes less is more.”

Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to USParaSwimming.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.