Ellen Keane is laser focused on making a splash in and out of the pool before she calls it quits at Paris 2024.
The Tokyo gold medallist is more nervous about her new podcast launch on Thursday than she was standing on the starting block before her two Paralympics finals.
'The Big D', an initial six episode show, isn't just a path into a career in media when Keane's pioneering career comes to an end.
READ MORE: Ellen Keane wins silver at World Championships as Nicole Turner snatches bronze
She came up with the idea over five years ago and the Allianz-backed podcast is designed to 'poke a bear' with its subject matter - conversations with people with disabilities about the challenges they face today.
"Oh my God, I'm so stressed about it," exclaimed Keane. "You can rely on your body to do the job when it comes to sport, your body just does it automatically.
"People can judge you on what you'd done in a race but it's not really going to upset you, whereas with the podcast I might be poking a bear a little bit and people can get upset.
"You're trying to change the status quo and people can get uncomfortable about things. So that is scary, to put your voice behind that.
"Obviously the 'D' is for disability. People are afraid of saying disability, people use so many other different words - words that people (with disability) don’t identify with.
"There’s a fear of saying disability. It’s not a dirty word."
The last episode, the only one she is yet to record, will be a chat with her parents that will run on International Day of People with Disability on December 3.
Keane added: "It's not even just to change perceptions.
"There are a lot of things that people with disabilities deal with in silence that generally able bodied people in their everyday lives don't realise.
"If more people were to realise what we go through...it might just make everyone's lives a bit easier.
"It's an educational thing, there's reference to kids and for parents even, to be having these conversations with kids as well and give them some ideas."
Keane sees herself as being in a privileged position compared to many other people with disabilities who don't have the platform she has.
"I'm trying to give them that voice," the 27-year-old said. "I don't know what it's like to be in a wheelchair, I only know from my friends around me.
"I can't always be the one so I'm giving other people the opportunity and it's really important to do that, otherwise I'd just become another person who is media hogging, which I don't want to do.
"There has to be a purpose behind this.
"It’s conversations that everyone is curious about but as a disabled person interviewing other disabled people - the banter that we have together, there’s things we’d say to each other that able-bodied people wouldn’t dare say.
"We’d be joking about different disabilities and which one we’d rather have and things like that!
"It’s non-PC but they’re the conversations that we as disabled people can have with each other. So it’s a bit like being a fly on the wall."
It was in July that Keane announced her plan to retire after the next Paralympics. - her fifth Games in total, having first competed as a 13-year-old in Beijing.
She was supposed to finish up after Tokyo but with no spectators allowed at the events due to Covid restrictions and with only three years to Paris, Keane decided to go through one more cycle.
"It’s 18 months of hard work and then it’s done," she said.
“I didn’t want to be an athlete who retired in the paper or on a random Tuesday, I want everyone to know it’s my last race because it makes it more special especially for the spectators and my family and my parents who travel over, everyone can say bye.
"It’s more about ending the career happy and not focusing on so much on the end goal.
"I have my gold medal now so there’s no pressure to win that medal.
“I’d love to do it again and get on the podium and that’ll be the fairytale ending - but as long as I’m enjoying it and I’m in the moment for my last race, that’s what I want.”
The World Championships in August 2023 doubles up as qualification for Paris.
However Keane's primary ambition is to become a world champion.
"I'm not even thinking about the silver medal, I've already won that," she commented, referring to finishing second in the 100m breaststroke in Madeira last summer.
"This is my only opportunity to be world champion. I would really like to try and do that, I'll do everything I can to make that possible."
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