Hannah Miley puts foot down after Olympics ruined by Chinese whispers

Swimmer says doping allegations about 16-year-old Ye Shiwen of China at London 2012 were unfair
Hannah Miley
Hannah Miley, pictured in a heat of the 400m individual medley at London 2012, won a gold and two silvers at last month's European short-course championships. Photograph: Tony Marshall/PA

On the first day of the Olympic Games this summer Hannah Miley was inadvertently thrown into the spotlight after Mark Cavendish failed in the men's road race. All of a sudden the softly spoken Scot became Team GB's first real chance of a medal at London 2012. Cue national hysteria, the weight of a nation's hopes resting on her petite frame. It was her first taste of 2012 mania.

The world 400m individual medley silver medallist had hidden herself away at the other end of the country in her home town of Inverurie, guided by her father and coach, Patrick Miley. Each day she ran three miles to reach the 25m four-lane public pool and train with her two brothers, before returning home to a mother who tried to keep the swimming-obsessed family sane with everyday talk, like picking up worming tablets for the cat, anything to distract them from the topic of the Olympics.

In London Miley deliberately avoided news of Cavendish's result to block out the pressure. But, if no one had mentioned it before she left the call-room, she could not fail to have detected it in the longing voices of a partisan crowd at poolside.

Not only did Miley's race become the focus of the national medal hunt but it took on a darker twist too, when the 16-year-old Ye Shiwen of China was accused of doping following her win in the 400IM final, a race in which Miley finished fifth. The then 22-year-old recalls an emotional blur – apologising to the nation and struggling to comment on the furore surrounding Ye's victory.

How does she view Ye's phenomenal win now? "It's such a tricky subject," Miley sighs. "You had a lot of accusations being pointed at her, pretty much straight after her race. And you think she's only 16, she's just swum the race of her life – let her have her moment. Everyone's very quick to try and see that destroyed and crumbled, which is a shame, and that's not the Olympic spirit.

"Everybody knows that they [the Chinese] have got past history of it [doping], it's a very difficult line to tread. For me I don't think that she is dirty, that she's doping. I just think that it's down to a lot of hard work. It's very unusual for a girl to come back so fast in that last 100m but it might just be that she's found something in training – or that's what I like to believe anyway. For me to put an opinion out there whether she's on drugs or not I can't really say. I'd like to say no, I don't think she is."

Miley says she had "done her homework" and knew what to expect from Ye, especially after the blisteringly fast heats which pushed the field close to their personal bests just to make the final. "I'd raced against her at the world championships and also at the world short-course championships the year before. I was very aware of what she was capable of and what she had done.

"My dad had always stated it will take someone to go under 4:30 to win the 400IM. But I didn't expect them to go so far under the world record. I didn't realise how she'd done it until I found out at the end that her last 100m was pretty much the same split as Ryan Lochte, and then that was like 'wow'."

Still Miley makes a disapproving face at the mention of John Leonard, executive director of the World Swimming Coaches' Association, who called Ye's swim "unbelievable".

"When you get [people saying] things like that it makes out that people are sore losers and that's not good. It's not very professional either. Come on, you've still got to be able to shake the other person's hand and say you've had the better race. You've got to celebrate it. If you're going to stand there with your arms folded and accuse someone of cheating, it's a very strong thing to do and a very, very sensitive topic to suddenly accuse someone of cheating, it can open a whole can of worms. She was tested and it came back saying she was clean. Surely that's enough evidence to say she was clean. And then you get that young American girl [Katie Ledecky], the 15-year-old who swam pretty close to the world record there, so you think the young ones are coming through, it's not just the Chinese."

Miley has a point. Ledecky took 15 seconds off her personal best in six months to swim the second-fastest time in history, beat the defending champion and world record holder, Rebecca Adlington, in the 800m final – and face doping questions of her own.

"I guess the difference with Ye Shiwen was her last 100m. It's a very tricky one. It's one of those things where you just don't want to be part of it. You don't want to point the finger. Just focus on the swimming." Putting her hands over her ears? "Yeah, you don't want to know. It puts an added pressure on you and it plays on your mind which is not a healthy thing to have. And then you're going to be thinking that for the rest of your life, without any hard evidence."

Influenced by her father, who spends hours poring over swimming videos and statistics, Miley prefers to analyse her own performance with numbers. She says she is pleased with her performance in the final where she swam 0.8sec faster than in the heats, the third biggest improvement in the field behind the two Chinese medallists. But the result did not live up to the expectation of others and she found herself apologising to the nation for letting them down. "The worst thing was seeing Sharron [Davis] because her face just looked so disappointed. I thought she was disappointed in me, and I was like, "No, hold on, I'm actually really happy with how things went"...I went to see Steve Parry and, again, he had that disappointed look and I was like, "No! Come on!"" She laughs.

"One thing I've noticed about the Olympics is that it's very, very emotional-based for an athlete. If things go well it's really blown out of proportion, if something goes slightly wrong, it can be blown into such a huge disaster when it's not the case."

Miley certainly seems to have got over the heartache. At the European short- course championships two weeks ago she set a European record to take gold in the 400m IM, adding to the silver medals in the 200IM and 800m freestyle she had won earlier. This week she hopes to add yet more medals to that tally at the world short- course championships in Istanbul.

Since the summer British Swimming has launched a major inquest into why it did not win more medals. "I'm glad to be away from that," says Miley. "It sounds kind of messy." She laughs. "That is the Olympic Games, you get the joyous, happy side and the broken-down, disheartened side. It's very difficult for an athlete to stay in the middle ground, and I've really put my foot down and said: 'No, I'm staying in this middle ground.' I don't want to hold grudges, it just haunts you for the rest of your life and that's not healthy. You want to go back into training with renewed passion, not have something sat on your shoulder eating away at you."