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Ex-champ Hackett detained in fresh woes
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OLYMPIC champion Grant Hackett was detained by police on Australia’s Gold Coast yesterday after his father called for help.
Hackett’s brother, Craig, said the family was struggling to cope with the 36-year-old retired swimmer’s mental health issues. “The whole family have done everything that we can but now it’s kind of out of our hands,” Craig Hackett was quoted as saying by the Australian Associated Press. “The Grant Hackett that Australia fell in love with, they can still have that affection toward him. This is not ‘Grant Hackett’.”
Craig Hackett said his younger brother’s personality had become almost unrecognizable.
“This is a completely different person,” Craig Hackett said. “I don’t know this person, my mum and dad don’t know this person. He’s there in body, but he’s not there in mind, soul or spirit.”
Hackett’s father, former police detective Neville, called police to his Gold Coast home around noon yesterday after two-time Olympic 1,500-meter freestyle gold medalist became agitated and aggressive.
The swimmer agreed to go with police and was later released, but not before the episode had made national news. “This is now a chronic problem and it looks like it’s not going to go away in a hurry,” Craig Hackett said. “From a mental health perspective I hope something can be done.
“To see someone who is so dominant and had the world at his feet to now, really we don’t know what’s going to happen — it doesn’t look encouraging.”
Hackett had a high profile as a swimmer and TV personality after winning gold in the 1,500 at the Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Games, holding the world record in the event, and finishing with silver at Beijing in 2008.
After his TV career unraveled following out-of-competition troubles, he tried to make a comeback for the Rio Olympics last year but didn’t qualify for the Australian team.
Last April, he publicly apologized for a drunken incident on a flight home from the Australian Olympic trials when he was accused of groping a male passenger who reclined the seat in front of him. Hackett conceded he’d been drinking alcohol before the flight and would seek help to quit.
Hackett has previously struggled with prescription drug problems and admitted he became dependent on a sleep medication. He flew to the United States in 2014 to spend time in a rehab center after he was spotted topless and disoriented in the lobby of a Melbourne casino.
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