Fran Halsall has spoken openly of her post 2012 struggles and given an in depth breakdown of the bus dramas that almost led to her missing her 50m freestyle semi final at the Rio Olympics while speaking to Hannah Miley and Lauren Quigley on the Honest Athletes Podcast.

Halsall, who still holds five British records, hung up her goggles after Rio, but it was her bounce back after London disappointment that she rates as one of her proudest achievements.

“I was putting my whole self-worth on 24 seconds worth of work and what happened on one day at a certain time,” she says of 2012, “and you can’t control what anybody else does that day either.

“I said if I don’t come away from this with an Olympic gold medal I am a failure but that’s just nuts when you think about I think about it now. That’s what I felt my self-worth was about, at that moment, and it killed me, absolutely broke me. I thought I was a massive failure.”

Bouncing back was not straightforward however. “It took a lot of reflecting and time to reposition how I felt about that and to go again” she recalls. “It was like a grieving period afterwards; I was up in the middle of the night crying my eyes out and went through a horrendous period.

I had to do so much work on the mental side of my sporting experience as much as my physical side and then I was really proud of myself after Rio coming fourth, because that’s going back into an environment after the last one being the most terrible experience of my life.”

But her Rio journey nearly came to grief for another reason, when the bus carrying Halsall and a number of other swimmers due to swim the 50 freestyle semi finals to the pool instead went to the athletics stadium. After some frantic behind the scenes work by team manager Dawn Peart and coach James Gibson (and no doubt staff from several other federations) the schedule was rejiggled to move the event to the end of the evening session, meaning Halsall got there with just moments to spare.

“I got to the pool didn’t have time to do a warm-up so the usual process is still out the window but I can’t control that, I know I’m in good shape I’m warm and I know I can swim this swim.” While clearly she was able to manage that adversity, she speculates that some of the others who went on the magical mystery tour had not handled the disruption as well, and possibly missed out on an Olympic final berth as a consequence. The rest though is history with Halsall winning her semi final but missing the podium in the final by an agonising 0.02s.

You can hear the full story of the bus and much more from Fran on the Honest Athletes Podcast – get it on Spotify or YouTube.