There was a time not long ago when Scott Miller wanted nothing more than to be back in prison, sweeping the floor of a gym.
When the former Olympic swimmer was granted parole in June 2024, after serving more than three years at two regional prisons in NSW for drug-related offences, life wasn’t what it used to be.
Freedom, he soon discovered, was harder to navigate than prison.
“When your case has been thrown through the media, you just think there’s a million eyes on you and you’re being judged,” Miller says. “You’re just really paralysed with fear when you get out.
“It was harder to get adjusted back into the community after prison than it was going in. It’s a really weird feeling, and I wasn’t in there that long. I imagine it’d be worse the longer you’re in.
“I remember being out for three months wishing I was back in there. I can’t tell you how hard life is when you get out.”
Miller is speaking publicly for the first time in more than a decade, since an emotional 60 Minutes episode in 2014 in which he was confronted about his fall from grace.
There is a reason why Miller is ready to talk. The sport that made him famous is now helping rebuild his life.
The 51-year-old is happier than ever and lucky to be alive.
Twenty years ago, Miller overdosed and ended up on life support in a Manly hospital. His once-glamorous life had collapsed into addiction and chaos after his swimming career ended.
There are uncomfortable realities that Miller has to live with. He is a convicted drug trafficker, former ice addict and former escort agency owner.
Three decades ago, Miller was also one of Australian sport’s biggest names – a teammate to Kieren Perkins and Susie O’Neill, crowned Cleo’s Bachelor of the Year in 1997, and for a time living at the Newtown home of his mentor, Alan Jones.
“I’m not walking around proud as punch,” Miller says. “I still feel a lot of shame around what’s happened and what I’ve done in my life, but you can’t let it cripple you.”
Between 2004 and 2025, Miller could not bring himself to swim a single lap.
For at least 1214 of those days, between 2021 and 2024, he was unable to.
“There are no pools in prison,” he says.
Swimming had become a source of pain for Miller. This was the man who won a silver medal in the 100m butterfly at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, an Australian hero of his time.
Miller finished just behind Russia’s Denis Pankratov, who infamously swam underwater for most of the opening lap, using a tactic that is now outlawed.
Those 26 hundredths of a second that separated gold and silver – about the time it takes to blink – had an enormous and devastating impact on Miller’s life.
So when Miller arrived alone at the Andrew “Boy” Charlton Aquatic Centre in Manly last October – three kilometres from the hospital where doctors saved his life in 2006 – and hauled himself back into the water, even he did not know how it would feel.
Miller swam about 500 metres – nothing compared with the kilometres upon kilometres he once churned out per session at his peak. It felt good.
“I wanted to feel what it was like to be alive again and back in the pool,” Miller says. “Once I dived in and swam for the first time, it was therapeutic and I enjoyed it.
“I had so much time to think while I was in there [in prison]. I was hoping to be out at age 50, and I got out at 49. You want to reset and start again … like turning back time.”
After trying to track Miller down, he rings from an unknown number. He speaks candidly, cracking the odd joke, revealing that a comeback of sorts began in his prison cell.
Miller was arrested in 2021 at his waterfront Sydney home in Rozelle and later pleaded guilty to supplying a large commercial quantity of methamphetamine, supplying a commercial quantity of heroin and participating in a criminal group.
Court documents revealed Miller met with a man who placed a bag of candles containing $2 million worth of ice in his car.
“You’ve got to go out there and face the music,” Miller says. “This is the way it was. Here I am now.”
In October last year, 16 months after being released from prison, Miller purchased a pair of swimming goggles for the first time in years. In a previous life, a sponsor would have sorted him out.
In the grips of his addiction and a partying lifestyle, following the black line of a pool had become Miller’s idea of hell. He had not swum since and remembers the date clearly: February 11, 2004.
His silver medal in Atlanta haunted him, and missing qualification for the Sydney Olympics in 2000, through injury, only deepened it.
Had Miller touched the wall ahead of Pankratov, the trajectory of his life may have been vastly different.
“I didn’t want to swim. I didn’t like the feeling. It was painful and I used to get really anxious,” Miller says.
“To then do it again after so many years and ease that pain, the next time it wasn’t as hard to get to the pool. I wanted to learn why this was so hard for me. I kept confronting it and breaking it down, wanting it to go away, and it did. The enjoyment of the sport came back slowly over about six months.”
Last month, at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre, Miller found himself back in lane four.
Miller broke the 100m butterfly Olympic record 30 years ago in lane four of the Atlanta pool during a preliminary heat.
With short grey hair and the Olympic rings still tattooed on his chest, Miller stood behind the blocks for the men’s 50m butterfly event at the Masters Swimming Australia National Championships.
Masters swimming attracts everyone from Olympians still chasing fast times to retirees looking to stay fit and social.
Those in attendance knew Miller’s race was significant. He dived in and emerged a national record holder in the men’s 50 to 54 year category.
His time of 25.41 was well below the previous national record of 26.03, but outside the world record of 24.96. Although Miller didn’t touch the wall first, the competitor who beat him, Ashton Baumann, was much younger and in a different age category.
Miller has registered with the Warringah Masters Swimming Club on Sydney’s northern beaches and trains three times a week in the pool.
The Monday, Wednesday and Friday sessions give him structure and routine.
His close friend Chris Fydler, part of Australia’s gold medal-winning 4x100m freestyle relay team in Sydney 2000, watched him swim in Brisbane.
“I didn’t really tell many people about it and didn’t know if I was going to do it,” Miller says. “I thought I’d like to do a 50 butterfly at 50 just to see how fast I could go. I wasn’t doing a lot of swimming, but I was improving. I thought, ‘This is weird, I wonder how fast I could swim?’ I definitely know I can swim a lot faster.
“Just the whole experience and warming up and putting on your ‘jammers’ [was new again]. I forgot how tight they were.
“That was great to have a mate [Fydler] there. When you have friends from sport at that level, it’s a different kind of friendship. It makes you realise what’s real and what’s not in life.”
While in prison, Miller completed a degree in building construction management and trained whenever he could, losing 26 kilograms. On pool deck, the physical signs of that work were obvious, with veins protruding prominently from his arms.
“People ask me what prison was like,” Miller says. “Think of the Australian Institute of Sport [in Canberra] but with no women or pools.”
“Being in reasonable shape out of prison helped. I fit in pretty well with an institutionalised environment. I became a gym sweeper in my last few years, so I was in the gym a lot in prison. I got to train all day. I made the most of my time in there and got pretty fit and lean. I was doing weights, rowing and on the assault bike. I went in at 125kg and came out at 99kg.”
Miller says he’s a “lot calmer and more relaxed” than the man who entered prison. He is his elderly mother’s carer and has a job with Alcohol and Drug Awareness Australia, flying to Melbourne three times a month to give talks to young tradies about the consequences of bad decisions.
“I’m completely honest when I speak to them and don’t make any excuses,” Miller says.
“I let them know how quickly bad choices can be dressed as solutions. You’ve really got to have contingencies in place in life and not put all your eggs in one basket. Reflecting on my life, I did a lot of that, and I think it didn’t set me up well.
“There are organisations that support the transition from sport into normal life. They weren’t around. You need to get ready for that before it’s all over. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life for sure.”
More than a decade after his emotional television confession – “I am a drug-taker” – failed to halt his spiral, Miller says this comeback is different. Those close to him believe he is a different person and fun to be around.
“It seems like this is his happy place,” says Masters Swimming Australia president Jane Noake. “It’s part of getting his life back together. If you hadn’t known the history, you wouldn’t have known the difference.
“He was very popular on pool deck. I haven’t heard any negative feedback. Anything that’s gone on before is irrelevant to me.”
Miller adds: “I haven’t had many negative comments, at least to my face. Everyone’s been pretty nice and accepting.
“I don’t think I’m going to put swimming down. I’m enjoying it. I’m just going to keep going.”
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