‘Bit humbling going from the Olympics to being the very worst player on a team that has 14-year-old girls on it’

Water polo might not be the most common answer to the ‘what-the-Olympian-did-next’ trope, but for Riordan, it was the right antidote to help her immediate post-swimming life. She went to her first water polo training session at the National Aquatic Centre in Abbotstown with her new club, St Vincent’s Water Polo Club, just a month after the Paris Olympics. Two weeks ago, she helped them win the Irish Senior Cup in Limerick.

“A bit humbling at the beginning going from the Olympics to being the very worst [player] on a team that has 14-year-old girls on it,” Riordan smiles. “At the moment, I’m in the mind space of ‘I want to enjoy’ sports, first and foremost, to be doing it because I want to be there. The Olympics were a heavy mental and emotional toll on me. I wanted a break from that.”

Co-existing with intense change has been part of Riordan’s story over the past year. After the Irish women’s 4x100m freestyle relay initially missed out on qualifying for Paris by one spot, Riordan retired from the sport at age 24. The twist came when Japan withdrew from the event in June, which meant Ireland got back in through the ranking system. Riordan had to unretire herself and had just a month to prepare for her first Olympics.

The breaking of an Olympic dream and the scramble to put it back together in such a short time left rough edges.

“The few months leading up to Paris were probably the most emotionally strained I’ve been in my life,” Riordan said. “I think I’d already grieved, grieved the loss. I had decided, ‘OK, it’s not happening for me, I’m not going to the Olympics’. And then, two weeks later, it was, ‘Get back to Dublin, you might be going’. It took a big toll on the mind more than the body.

“I think I kind of had a sour taste in my mouth from swimming after, even though I had this amazing experience and I’ll never forget that. I didn’t even want to do the swim sessions with the water polo team. I managed to force myself to do it.”

The intensity only escalated when she got to Paris. The relay team came 16th overall in their heats on the official opening day, but then she tested positive for Covid afterwards and had to leave the village immediately. The five-ringed experience didn’t hit the peak she imagined.

“You do build it up in your head a little bit and then you get there and you’re like, oh my goodness the food is not nice, the hotel is not nice. I got Covid when I was over there. I was not well when I raced. I tested negative before I raced and tested positive after, so I got sent home immediately.

“You walk out and you’re like, this is it, this is the moment. And then you’re also like, oh this is it. Two edges of a sword, I guess.”

Her new sport brings her into contact with her old home. The first time she walked into the National Aquatic Centre to go water polo training, she felt a shudder, “post-traumatic stress disorder from all the training” from her swimming days.

While there was an element of a team when she competed in the relays for Ireland, it’s not the same as competing in an actual team like water polo (a physical sport described as a combination of swimming, basketball and wrestling).

“In Paris, we were all really good friends, we were all doing the same event, but we were also all competing to get onto the relay. You’re there for each other, but you’re also, ‘I want to beat her’. It’s a hugely different dynamic. Whereas in water polo, it’s like everybody is taking a share of the pressure, it’s not one person’s fault, it’s the team. That’s something I’ve never experienced before and it’s been so refreshing to be a part of that.

​“I didn’t realise how physical the sport was. People are wrestling each other in the water, but it’s almost refreshing to see that in a women’s sport because that’s not how we’re meant to behave I guess, but it is very physical, very aggressive.

“It’s different, even learning tactics and stuff, I’ve never really done anything like that, just swim in a straight line and hope for the best.”

Post-Paris, Riordan has started working as a documentation specialist with a pharmaceutical company in Grange Castle, Dublin. She’s also training for the marathon in Lisbon in October.

“Something I always knew coming out of swimming is that I can’t just stop activity altogether. I think I get quite down if I do. So I picked up all these sports, I’m just trying everything out. Before I used to work my life around my sport, whereas now I’m working sport around my life. It’s a different dynamic for me.”