Heartache that made Hannah a winner

Scots golden girl Hannah Miley is hiding a family heartache behind her famous smile.

Hannah was just four-years-old when her brother Thomas died and experts believe she may have plugged the void it left in her life with a gritty desire to win.

Thomas passed away on the day he was born and speaking previously about the tragedy Hannah has admitted she feels driven to “make up for not going to Thomas’s grave when I was younger”.

She has also spoken frankly about how she was scared of the burial and how she remembers her baby brother’s lips turning blue as she held him in her arms to say goodbye.

She said: “I recall holding him, and wondering why his lips were turning blue. While I have no memory of being told he had passed away, I remember the funeral.

“My dad was holding me and I was looking in front to where Thomas was being buried and it scared me. Everybody was wearing black and were in tears.

“For a long time I refused to go to the grave because I hated seeing my parents so upset. At first it was difficult for me to understand and then later I got quite sad because I thought, ‘It’s a little brother I never had’.

“I knew it was a very significant event because my parents went so quiet and I felt I should be quiet around them. It changed my mum and dad.

“I’ve since spoken to my dad and realise how much was going on behind the scenes. Looking back I have a deep respect for the fact that my mum and dad stayed together.

“They must have received a lot of support to be able to come through it. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had [brothers] Alistair and Joseph.“

The sad chapter seems incongruous in light of the fact Hannah has earned the poolside nickname “Smiley Miley” due to her sunny disposition.

But leading experts say high achievers such as Hannah are adept at hiding their true feelings and using achievement to mask painful memories.

One of the UK’s leading psychologists Lancaster University Professor Cary Cooper believes Hannah may have spent her life subconsciously trying to compensate for the loss of Thomas.

He said; “In the past I’ve interviewed a lot of successful people to see what it was that drove them on. I wasn’t fishing for something in their childhood. I thought they were going to say something about opportunities they had, or someone who mentored them. But I found quite a high proportion of them had lost someone close to them early on in life. The impact of that was enormous.

“Later in life, those in this position were driven to be successful because it would allow them to gain a certain amount of control. Not in a nasty way in the form of controlling others, more that it would allow them to have greater control of things around them.

“Anybody in a family who loses a sibling early on and sees the impact on the parents will of course try to compensate for the loss a case of ‘I want to make my parents happy and I can do that by being successful, and make up for all the nasty things that have happened’.”

On Thursday Hannah swam the second fastest race of her career to see off English pretender Aimee Willmott in a stunning 4 mins 31.76 seconds. The gold medal winning performance was the fastest time since setting the European record five years ago.

But after a string of poor performances and doubts over her training programme, Hannah and her father had a heart to heart to discuss the best way forward.

She said: “It has been a tough year and I have had my scalp taken a couple of times. It is not a young person’s sport any more. It is anybody’s game it is about having the heart to fight for it.”