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."
Teammates and coaches were the first to act in helping him work through his mental health strife. Armstrong has been training at Cal, where he followed Bowe, and head coach David Durden became what the swimmer referred to as his “pillar” and a person he could talk to about anything.
Associate head coach David Marsh became a spiritual mentor for Armstrong to help him find comfort in his Christian faith. Fellow associate head coach Josh Huger, who coaches Armstrong directly as the Golden Bears’ sprints coach, kept him smiling with his jokes and upbeat personality.
Jack Alexy, who qualified alongside Armstrong for the 100-meter relay team, stood by him as a friend in his time of need.
“I told him what was going on, and it was a day that I had missed morning practice,” Armstrong said. “I was going to go later in the day to make it up, and I never asked him to (come with me), but I said, ‘I’m going to go this time,’ just because I knew the pool would be open. So after his classes, he came back and did a practice with me so I didn’t have to be alone. That’s why the relay is so special, is because I get to share that with him.”
Team USA’s sports psychiatry team also helped Armstrong in working through his issues. He’s continued to see his psychiatrist even as his well-being has improved, which has further helped his personal growth and aided his emotions as he prepares for Paris.
Looking back now, Armstrong is grateful for his tribulations.
“It truly made me a better person,” Armstrong said. “Hindsight is always 20/20, but I learned and grew so much from that experience that I would do it again.”
Armstrong is a distinguished swimmer with five medals, including two golds, from the 2022 Worlds and another three medals with two golds, including his first individual gold in the 50-meter back, from 2023. He set a world record in that event in 2022. He won five Big Ten Championships in 2022 and was named Ohio State’s Male Athlete of the Year for 2021-22.
While the 50-meter backstroke isn’t featured at the Olympics, he seemed a shoo-in on paper to qualify for the 100-meter version of that discipline, where he earned bronze at both the 2022 and 2023 Worlds before taking gold in 2024. But that doesn’t factor in the toll his personal struggles took on his training leading up to the Olympic Trials.
It also doesn’t factor in a slip off the starting block in the semifinal round. Despite emerging from the water at least half a body length behind the rest of his competitors, Armstrong rallied to finish fast enough for a spot in the finals, where he took second place to earn his spot in the event in Paris.
“The very first thought is, ‘Do I stop or do I just race through it?’ Obviously, you don’t have a ton of time to think when you’re in the middle of a race, so it was not even a fraction of a second,” Armstrong said. “As that thought came across, instinct kind of took over and I just tried to stay calm and not overswim and trust that I could still make it back.”
Armstrong missed out on the finals for the 100 back in Tokyo three years ago by one one-hundredth of a second, but he’s much more confident this go-round. He felt “thrown into the deep end” at the games last time, which was his first-ever international event. Now, he’s got three more years of international experience under his belt and knows how to manage the emotions of what is a long, high-stress meet for swimmers.
“In just the 100 freestyle, I dropped almost a second (at trials),” Armstrong said. “So once I get a little bit more rest and tune up some things and don’t slip on the block in the semifinal then my backstroke should be really good.”
"It truly made me a better person. Hindsight is always 20/20, but I learned and grew so much from that experience that I would do it again."– Hunter Armstrong reflecting on his struggles
Armstrong’s aim now is to rededicate fully to his craft.
“Truly, my focus is just consistency,” Armstrong said. “Even going into trials, I still wasn't consistent with my practice schedule. I was still dealing with that stuff. I truly wasn’t over her and feeling good mentally until like a week out from trials. ... So that's my main job is to just do everything that I can that I should have been doing the whole year within this month before the Olympics, just to get a little bit more of an edge.”
Following the Paris Games, Armstrong will fly back to Columbus, where he’s purchased a house he’ll move into. He’s leaving the West Coast to return to Ohio State for the remainder of his professional swimming career, and he’ll help coach the Buckeyes while finishing his degree in Sport Industry.
