“It’s like I’ve already got an open wound and you’re stabbing me in it,” Matty Lee says as, deep into our second hour at a beautiful old Edwardian swimming pool in Leeds, we turn to Kirsty Coventry’s recent comments that athletes should not be paid at the Olympic Games. In her role as the International Olympic Committee president Coventry, a former swimmer who won seven Olympic medals including gold in 2004 and 2008, has caused outrage among athletes.
The IOC confirmed in its own financial report that it made $12.4bn (£9.2bn) between 2021 and 2024 and so Lee, an Olympic diving champion, grimaces when he considers Coventry’s resistance to paying the people we want to watch – the athletes. It is sobering to consider her stance in the company of Lee who, without bitterness, has told me about his hidden world as a retired Olympic champion now struggling emotionally and financially.
