“I couldn’t have picked a better way to end it.”
Ross Murdoch summed up his Birmingham performances perfectly. If this is to be the end of his glittering career in the pool, it was the ending he deserved. But his last chapter was nearly so different.
Ross won bronze from lane eight in the 50m breaststroke in what might be his last individual race. He completed a hat-trick of bronze medals in Birmingham after making the podium in the 200m breaststroke and as part of the 4x100m medley relay team.
His only other major 50m breaststroke medal came at the 2016 European Championships in London.
He said: “I’m absolutely buzzing, I've done it. It’s the only one I’ve never had.
“I’ve had a 200 medal, a 100 medal, but all I ever wanted to be was a 50 breaststroker.”
His gold medal in the 200m breaststroke at Glasgow 2014 was one of the stories of the Games. Ross went on to win medals at three Commonwealth Games, two World Championships and two European Championships and he competed at the Olympic Games in Rio and Tokyo.
Ross has been supported throughout his career by the Scottish Swimming Performance Programme, which sportscotland invest in through financial investment and also support services which are delivered through the Stirling University performance hub.
During the COVID-19 pandemic the 28-year-old was toying with retiring but carried on for his second Olympic Games and a busy 2021 before quietly calling it quits in December 2021.
But the Balloch swimmer struggled to come to terms with life out of the pool.
He said: "I was just really bummed out and ready for a break. I just needed to stop without the intention of coming back because I felt like it was my time and I had other priorities that were more important.
"And I got probably four weeks down the line and said to myself, 'I think I kind of miss it' but not that much that I wanted to seriously think about it.
"Then probably a month later I was feeling it and after ten weeks I was like 'oh god I'm in one of the worst spots of my life here'.
"I was really struggling to find structure and balance and I didn't feel like myself and socially isolated. I just didn't feel like I had any purpose.
"It got to week 11 and it was a Tuesday afternoon and I said to myself that I'm going to go up and watch the swimming and speak to my friends and that it's probably just going to settle me.”
Murdoch trained at the University of Stirling alongside Head Coach Steve Tigg and turned up to watch his friends go through their paces.
But instead of feeling relieved and settled, he was flooded with the urge to return.
He added: "I remember just sitting and watching it and wishing I was in there.
"I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. I asked Steve whether I could come back in the morning, and he said I could come and watch and I said 'no, can I bring my trunks in the morning. I must do this'.
"Swimming that first session on my own, I was swimming a 600m Backstroke with paddles which is notoriously an awful thing to do.
"And there was a solitary tear of happiness in my goggles that it was the best and I knew then I had made the right decision to come back."
The decision to return to the pool came just six weeks out from the Commonwealth Games trials, making his Birmingham heroics all the more remarkable.
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