Two-time Olympic gold medalist Ryan Held announced his retirement from professional swimming in August. The Springfield native earned both of his gold medals as part of the U.S. Men's 4×100 Freestyle Relay teams in 2016 and 2024.
Held joins Community Voices to reflect on his swimming career, share his ongoing ties to his hometown of Springfield, and talk about the importance of supporting young athletes. He also discusses his career transition to a role at Goldman Sachs, and how swimming will continue to play a role in his life beyond competition.
Transcipted by AI with human editing for readability.
Craig McFarland:
Welcome to Community Voices on NPR Illinois. I'm Craig McFarland. Today's guest is two-time Olympic gold medal winner Ryan Held. Ryan recently announced that he is retiring from professional swimming. He does hail from Springfield, having graduated from Sacred Heart Griffin in 2014. He's also recently taken on a role at Goldman Sachs, which we'll discuss with him today. Ryan, welcome to Community Voices. It's so great to have you.
Ryan Held:
Thank you for having me on. This is a great honor.
Craig McFarland:
It's fun to reach out to you and talk about your experiences on the world stage, then back here in Springfield. You recently announced your retirement from swimming. I went back and I watched a lot of clips from your time. I saw clips from high school, from college, and of course your time with USA Swimming as well in the Olympics. When you look back at your career, what are the moments that shine brightest for you?
Ryan Held:
Some of the moments that I look back upon most fondly are, oddly enough, not even my own races. They're other people's races. One of my all-time favorite memories, well, there's two of them. One of them is watching my teammate, Derek Kren. He won the ACC title in 2016 in the 100 breast, and he won it from lane one. That was the turning point of, is NC State going to win the ACC title? I don't know. But once he won that race, that was the nail in the coffin. The tide's turning. That kicked off a lot of momentum for our team. Then my second favorite memory is swimming in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and we were driving back to Raleigh. We had three Danish teammates at NC State at the time. time. Their Danish nationals were going on. So we stopped at a Bob Evans, had breakfast, and we were all, probably 10 of us, huddled around one iPhone watching our teammate compete and earn a spot for the Danish Olympic team in the 200 free. It was so fun. We were randomly in Goldsboro, North Carolina, one iPhone, 10 of us ran to Bob Evans, and we were cheering for our teammate to make the Olympic team, and he did. It was great. If I have to pick my own career, one would be winning the city title by one point when I was at SHG. That was great, my senior year. College, Rio was hard to top, that was awesome. Then professional, Paris, that seems like an easy cop-out answer, but another one of my all-time favorite memories was going to dual in the pool, which is where it was a dual swim meet between the United States and Australia. We got to experience so many things, see so many sights, and it was a friendly competition. Wwe got to hang out with the Australian team beforehand. There was no money or no medals involved. It was truly hanging out, getting to know other people. It was cool. It was one of the best parts about the sport.
Craig McFarland:
That's fantastic. I love that you, in almost every story you mentioned, mentioned some component of teamwork as well. I'd love to talk to you about that, your relay team, and everything else. Before I get there, I like to call it your superhero origin story, your swimming origin story, what was it about this sport called to you from a young age?
Ryan Held:
I originally started swimming when my brother started and we swam for the racquet club. My mom wanted both boys in one place instead of one boy at soccer practice, one boy at swim practice. She wanted me at swim practice to be with my brother. That's how I got into the sport of swimming. I probably started swimming when I was 6, until 7th grade. I was a multi-sport athlete: soccer, cross country, track, and then swimming was one part of the year. I broke my leg playing indoor soccer. After that, my rehab road was aqua jogging and aqua therapy. I got that sense of and feel of the water again and that weightlessness and flow. I wasn't great at running, so that took that one out. I wasn't going to play soccer anymore, so that crossed that one out. All I had left was swimming, and I was good at swimming, but I think once I became a full year-round swimmer, that's when I transitioned from being good to great and elevated from Springfield, Illinois, to central Illinois, to good in the state of Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, and Indiana area. That was the silver lining of breaking my leg, full commitment to swimming. I started swimming at the downtown Y with the four-lane pool that was right behind the train tracks. Whenever the 6:15 commuter train from Chicago was coming into the station, it'd blare its horn and you knew the time without ever looking at the clock. Just from that train. I stayed out there all the way until the Karasota's Y was built, then moved out there for the bigger pool and bigger facilities.
Craig McFarland:
Taking your journey into the Olympics, not many people get a chance to represent their country in the Olympics, and you've done it twice. Walk me through your Olympic experiences. First of all, making the team, then how the different experiences were in 2016 versus 2024.
Ryan Held:
2016 was the physical medal, then 2024 was the mental medal. I'll explain that when later, but in 2016, I had a good freshman year at college, was starting to get momentum, and I realized trials are coming up this year. Every event for USA Swimming and Olympic trials, they'll take the top two, 1st and 2nd place. But for the 100 freestyle and the 200 freestyle, they take the top four to make a relay, and they'll take the next two as alternates. In 100 free, 50 free, 200 free, those are my bread-and-butter events. Right now, I'm ranked 11th.
When you're in the top 3 the difference is a couple of tenths away from being the top six in the country. I really put my head down, do all the right things, be a good athlete in and out of the pool, I think I can really have a good shot at making the Olympic team. That year I had a great training year, went to trials, prelims. I'm at a prelims race. I was the second seed overall. That semi-finals race I finished second seed overall going into finals. It's funny that Rowdy Gaines, who is the NBC USA Swimming broadcaster, the color commentatory, he showed me his info cards for each swimmer, and it had Caeleb Dressel, 2016 NCAA champion swimmer of the year, high school national swimmer of the year, all this other accolades. Nathan Adrian, Olympic gold medalist. And Ryan Held, 2014 high school swimmer of the year from the state of Illinois. I had one bullet point. I was a pretty unknown dark horse. swimmer, but made the team and then swam on the prelims relay.
Did a well enough job to impress the coaches that I got offered the night relay spot. Then we weren't supposed to win the gold medal, France was. France, Australia, Russia were supposed to kick our butts. Then we won that race.
When I was on the podium, a lot of those emotions came up, surfaced that I was this kid from Springfield, Illinois. I grew up in a four-lane pool. I didn't have any crazy sports science, sports academy. I thankfully got recruited to NC State, swam there. I wasn't pegged to make the Olympic team. I wasn't pegged to make the finals team. Then we weren't pegged to win. Having achieved all those steps and winning that gold medal, it was emotional and I thought about my journey of how I got there, and where I came from, and was honored to be representing the United States, even more like honored to represent the state of Illinois, honored to represent Sangamon County, Springfield. It was such a great feeling.
Then I kept swimming, I had to finish my junior senior year at NC State. That was 2018. Olympic Games were 2020. Perfect. Two years training. Let's go. Let's do it. I decided to move to Indiana for a new training stimulus, new set of eyes, new training partners, change things up, move things around. Then that coach who was at Indiana quickly took the head coaching job at Alabama. I ricocheted off Indiana down to Tuscaloosa, lived there for two years. Training was going great. Awesome. Super excited for 2020 trials. Then, COVID happened. Pushed everything back a year. That created so many bumps in the road.
Going into 2021, I was doing well, confident, swam the prelims fine, semi-finals fine, finals I swam 6th. Usually, they take 6 but there is a rule that's hardly ever acted upon that you can only take 12 relay-only swimmers. Ror some reason that year, everyone was specified, not a lot of doubles. I was the 13th relay-only swimmer. Wow. They only took five spots in the 100 free. So, I missed that one. That was pretty brutal because that one was, swimming was for so long, my enjoyment, my life, it was my physical, my social, everything. It brought me so much joy and happiness. All of a sudden, swimming just brought me pain. Pain and misery and, "This stinks. Do I want to swim to 2024? Do I not want to?" But I decided to step up, step up in the arena, get back on that horse. I wanted to make one more try at 2024. Worked with a sports psychologist to make sure I covered all the bases, the physical, the emotional, the mental. I got back on the team and we won another Olympic gold. That to me was the mental side of it. I got the monkey off my back, slayed the dragon, whatever quote you want to say.
Craig McFarland:
It's a great sports movie. You need to have that moment, then you can have the climax of the movie when you get back up on that podium. It's incredible to hear that story. Now that you're transitioning again from swimming, that identity, to what you're doing at Goldman Sachs, I want to get to that. Before I do, I remember taking my son into the YMCA in town and I see your name plastered all over those swimming pools. You have a big connection to the Kerasotes YMCA and even to the new downtown YMCA. You've visited them several times and you mentor those young swimmers. Why you feel it's important to help and support those younger kids that are just starting their journey?
Ryan Held:
I was once one of those kids. I looked up to my idols who weren't even Olympic swimmers. I'm not sure if they swam Division I. I remember thinking, if they can do it, I can do it. One of my biggest influences was my brother. He swam Division III with me thinking, he's a college athlete. That's what I want to be. I want to follow his footsteps. I think having someone that is like them, someone from Springfield, Illinois, someone from, this, not a small community, but it's not a Chicago, it's not a Dallas, it's not New York, LA, Florida, because they have so many pools. We have two YMCAs. They can now see someone else has done it, then why can't I? "Oh, Ryan did it by doing these steps, these goals, If he can do it, he had the same resources as I do, then why can't I do that? " It doesn't have to be winning Olympic gold medals. It could be swimming in college, Division I, Division II, Division III, any of them, or getting a state AAA time or a state cut. It's important to be a good role model and mentor because I know when I looked up to my role models, I thought they were titans among men, could do no wrong. Being that positive influence for the kids nowadays is great.
Craig McFarland:
Being able to give back to that community a little bit. It seems like your drive or your mission statement when it came to what swimming which is thought of as kind of an individual sport, you've grasped onto that team aspect, that mentor aspect. Whether that be with your brother, or at NC State, with your Danish teammate, or it be with your team in the Olympics. Talk a bit about your transition from being a professional swimmer to your position at Goldman Sachs in operational risk information security and how that transition has been. You officially announced in August that you were retiring from swimming professionally. How long have you been with Goldman Sachs? Walk us through that transition and how you are adapting to this new environment?
Ryan Held:
Swimming has been a huge help. I have the opportunity and been blessed with having teammates who are all around the world, and they come from different cultures and different viewpoints of things. Some of the Danish swimmers would love to talk about this, that, and why do we do this? Why do they do that? And even having different swim techniques, oh, you do this? Oh, we do this back in Denmark because of this. I never thought of it like that. Little things like that. Having that skill translating to Goldman Sachs is having this ability to be inclusive of my team members and hearing fully their viewpoint, where they're coming from, and being able to work with such a diverse group of people. We have team members in our headquarters in Dallas, Salt Lake City, New York, and London. Working with those teams who are coming from different cultures, viewpoints, and facilitating effective communication between them all, that was really helpful with swimming, having different teammates from all over the world, and it has helped me grow as a corporate professional here in Goldman.
Craig McFarland:
That's more on the team side. Individually, what do you see your future being, clearly swimming is still a passion of yours, do you see yourself helping out at a local pool or what do you think you'll be doing as far as swimming is concerned in the future?
Ryan Held:
I told my wife there was only there's only one head coaching job that I would take, and they don't have a swim team. But it's the University of Oklahoma. I grew up an Oklahoma fan. They don't have a swim team. I was always joking that if they started swim team, that would be the one head coaching job I would take. How I see myself giving back to the swimming community would be coaching a high school volunteer team because I have an obvious passion for the sport and at high school level, the ceiling is high. They have so much room for potential and they want to be there. To them,it's all play. It's not work. It's just play. It's go out there, have fun. That's a huge mindset to have. That mindset shifts when swimming becomes no longer play, but when it becomes work. That's when a huge psychological shift of college, post-grad, high school swimmers happens and they try to retain that sense of play.
Craig McFarland:
That's a good message for kids to take that look to you as an inspiration because here you are from our hometown and you performed the best on that world stage. Thank you for your time today. I could geek out with you all day about sports psychology and about the mindset side of things. I'm a huge Ted Lasso guy. It's incredible to think about what a positive and growth mindset can do for an athlete or for someone that's making that transition like you have into a larger corporation like Goldman Sachs and that position that you have now. We from the city of Springfield can't wish you anything but the best, Ryan. We hope that as you travel back again, you continue to inspire that next group of swimmers to follow in your footsteps.
Ryan Held:
Thank you for having me. I love I love any opportunity to talk about Springfield, and growing up, and where I came from, and swimming. I'd love to talk about sports psychology and and Springfield. Another time.
