'I spent a long period trying to suppress memories': Why Alicia Coutts is returning to swimming

"I spent a long period of my life trying to suppress those memories and forget about them," the Olympic gold medallist said of her time at the AIS, when swimming for gold was made to mean more than it should.

On this day Coutts picks up the phone from home, running on one hour of sleep after her three boys - aged one, three and five - decided that's all she'd need overnight.

Yet you can still sense the excitement when she talks about getting back in the pool. Never anything too serious these days, but still three or four kilometres every session - just "to feel like I've done something".

Anything less is not enough for Coutts, who was only the third Australian Olympian after Shane Gould and Ian Thorpe to win five medals in a single Olympic Games. Not sure about you, but this mere mortal reckons three kilometres is enough to last a year or two.

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Coutts is back in the pool this month for the Starlight Children's Foundation's annual Super Swim, an initiative targeting $2 million for sick kids throughout February.

But there was a time Coutts didn't even want to look at a pool.

"When I retired after Rio in 2016, I was very much at that point where I was just like 'I don't want to train, I don't want to swim, I don't want to look at a pool, I don't want to go running'," Coutts said.

"I'd done it for so long that I definitely needed that break from it. I know other athletes in the past who have never got back in the pool again after retiring, because they were just at their end.

"They couldn't deal with it anymore and didn't want to look at a pool."

You naturally wonder what life as a swimming golden girl was like.

That's beyond the 7am starts on pool deck, where she would spend half an hour stretching and doing abdominal workouts before swimming for two and a half hours. Beyond the stint at work before she'd come back to the pool in the afternoon and do it all over again, this time swimming for two, maybe three hours.

An Australian Sports Commission restorative justice program has been established to help former AIS athletes who experienced harm from inappropriate practices or abuse as a result of their time at the AIS.

The ASC has vowed to provide meaningful acknowledgement, care and support to athletes.

The program means something to Coutts, who was shamed for adding weight while on her period and had an AIS nutritionist tell her she had to avoid drinking any calories because she had to shed kilograms.

"That brought a lot of demons up for me. I struggled a lot over the last 15 months with my mental health because of that. I put on a lot of weight," Coutts said.

"That was a reason for me becoming an ambassador for Isowhey, I wanted to get my life back on track, I wanted to feel good about myself. I felt like it was so important to speak out about it, because so many athletes don't talk about it. They suppress it. They keep it inside themselves and they fight that demon themselves.

"It's not just athletes, it's everyday people. I just wanted to tell people I'm like everyone else, I have experienced these things and I'm coming out the other side.

"I'm trying to bring awareness to the issue, because I don't want it happening to other girls, I don't want it happening to other athletes, I don't want them going through and thinking that treatment is okay, or thinking nothing will be done about it.

"I want it to be known and heard that being treated that way is not okay. You need to tell somebody, stand up for yourself and seek help."

Coutts is confident the restorative justice program is a step in the right direction. It suggests there is a genuine desire to make a meaningful change, and there is renewed hope sporting bodies will now increase support to today's athletes.

As for Coutts today, she just has to find some time to get to the pool to hit her target in this month's charity swim.

"A very modest 20 kilometres down for my goal for Starlight," Coutts said. "When you're a full-time working mum, everything fits in around the kids. It's about finding those little pieces of time when you can do things without breaching the code."

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