Former Ohio State swimmer Hunter Armstrong overcame a year of heartbreak and severe mental health struggles to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
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FORMER OHIO STATE SWIMMER HUNTER ARMSTRONG OVERCOMES YEAR OF MENTAL HEALTH STRUGGLES, HEARTBREAK AND SEMIFINAL SLIP TO QUALIFY FOR PARIS OLYMPICS
Hunter Armstrong has always been a performer at heart. But outside the swimming pool – his grandest stage – he felt like he was drowning.
In June 2023, the man Armstrong followed out to California to train under, Matt Bowe, left Cal to become Michigan’s head swimming and diving coach. While Armstrong understood the move was best for Bowe and his family and didn’t hold it against him, it still created a major personal hardship.
In July, just before the former Ohio State swimmer won his first world title in the 50-meter backstroke at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, his grandfather passed away. Then in February, three days before he left for the 2024 Worlds, he suffered the first real heartbreak of his life when his girlfriend broke up with him unexpectedly.
“After I got back from Worlds, I was missing a lot of practices. I would sleep – I think the most I slept during that little time period was 20 hours – but I’d average 16 to 18. I didn’t leave my bed really. I maybe would go to practice, but I’d wake up and DoorDash food and stay in my room and try to watch movies, because that was really the only thing that I knew could distract me.”
It took a lot of support and self-growth for the multi-talented Armstrong to pull himself back above water, seek the help he needed and cap it all off by qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games – his second Olympiad – in both the 100-meter back and as part of Team USA’s 100-meter freestyle relay team.
“My coaches and teammates noticed that,” Armstrong said. “I wasn’t going to tell them that I got broken up with. I’m very much of the handle your own business (mindset). But it became clear that I wasn’t able to handle it anymore. And so my friends and teammates and my coaches stepped in and they really helped me get back to it. So that's why it was such an accomplishment for me to make the (Olympic) team because for five months, I maybe trained two of them.”
A gold medalist as part of Team USA’s 100-meter medley relay team at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, the array of interests pursued by Armstrong is signified strongest by his nickname in the swimming world, “Magic Man.”
Since childhood, he’s practiced magic. The moment that sparked his interest was a long drive to a swim meet.
“I was little, but one of my buddies was in the car with me and like, ‘Hey, want to see a magic trick?’ (I responded) ‘Um, sure,’” Armstrong said. “It was super cheesy, exactly what you’d expect from a 6 or 7-year-old. I really thought that was cool, and I got on YouTube, and I started learning some and I realized that it’s actually really fun. So I just stuck with it.”
While he wants to stay in close-up magic, he said that cards are “elementary” when it comes to the art and wants to expand his horizons. He’s been working with rings and other items people keep on themselves as well as mentalism.
Musical theatre is another of his passions. He starred in multiple plays while in high school. Acting is something he hopes to pursue after his swimming career is over, and he’s already made friends with an accomplished actor at the highest level of show tunes, Jordan Litz. Following the Olympics, Litz plans to take Armstrong backstage at a Broadway production. Armstrong also played a role in a commercial for FIGS, a medical wear company that is outfitting 250 American healthcare workers and volunteers in Paris.
“I’d love to get back into it,” Armstrong said. “I’ve made a lot of friends within Broadway. It was actually really cool, last time I was in New York I went to see 'Wicked,' which I’ve seen probably six times now, but my sister-in-law had never seen a Broadway show. ... The lead Fiyero (played by Litz) came out, and the dude was massive. Like, there’s no way this is just a normal theatre guy. Then, turns out, he actually swam at Olympic trials in 2012. He was a college swimmer. So I made friends with him.”
All his interests fell dull in the wake of his struggles over the past year, however. The end of his relationship brought all the pain to a head.
“I lost a lot of people that I loved and that heartbreak, I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Armstrong said. “That was my first real relationship. I had a proposal planned out, I was already preordering the ring. Like, I was certain that I was going to marry this girl, and I quickly watched it all crumble.”
It took a weightlifting incident at the Olympic Training Center for Armstrong to realize just how big of a rut he was in.
“It was our national team camp and so we all went out to Colorado Springs and I was training the best I ever trained,” Armstrong said. “I thought I was using the negative emotions to sort of fuel myself. So I went into the weight room and added like 150 pounds to my squat and hurt myself. That's when I realized I wasn't actually in control of my emotions.”
"I HAD A PROPOSAL PLANNED OUT, I WAS ALREADY PREORDERING THE RING. LIKE, I WAS CERTAIN THAT I WAS GOING TO MARRY THIS GIRL AND I QUICKLY WATCHED IT ALL CRUMBLE."
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