Updated ,first published
Olympian turned convicted drug dealer Scott Miller isn’t expecting everyone to sympathise with his story, as told in an ABC News documentary charting his fall from grace and the rebuilding of his life.
The former butterfly swimmer was so stung by his last media appearance – a grilling by 60 Minutes’ Tara Brown following his 2013 arrest for possession of methamphetamine, for which he received a one-year suspended jail sentence – that he initially said no to the two-part series Deep End: The Scott Miller Story.
But, since his 2024 release from prison, after serving more than three years for his role in a drug syndicate supplying crystal meth, or “ice”, Miller feels the time is right to “clear up a few misconceptions”.
“I need to own my mistakes,” he says, from his childhood home in Manly, where he cares for his mother, Jenny. “All I can do is tell my story and [people can] take it or leave it. But I know my heart’s in the right spot.
“I know I’m not a bad person. I’ve just made some mistakes in life and my whole mantra now is about trying to help kids not go down the same path.”
In the documentary, Miller, 50, appears physically strong, in training for the Masters Swimming Australia National Championships held in Brisbane in April, at which he broke a national record in the 50-metre butterfly. But he’s emotionally brittle as he sits on his mum’s couch, recalling long afternoons in the backyard pool, where Jenny taught the neighbourhood kids.
Then came the Australian Institute of Sport when he was 15 years old, followed by Commonwealth gold, and, famously, silver at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, after losing by a fraction of a second to Denis Pankratov. The Russian had controversially – but not illegally – swum much of the first lap underwater. It was an accumulation of this moment, a series of injuries and what he says was a lack of support from the elite swimming profession, that probably triggered Miller’s downward spiral.
“They didn’t give a f—. They were just there to take. I felt used,” he says. “I was currency. No one gave a shit about Scott and about Scott’s future … I was pissed off at the world and I got to the stage where, especially when the addiction grabbed hold of me, I didn’t really have a care for life.”
He would have liked a post-retirement media career like some of his peers, including childhood friend Johanna Griggs, who appears in the documentary, along with other swimmers and coaches.
“I used to get thrown in front of the camera, but I never got told exactly what to do,” Miller says. “I had no mentor.”
According to the documentary, he did have one supporter – former shock jock Alan Jones, who is facing charges of indecent assault. But Miller says Jones was too “controlling”, inadvertently pushing Miller too soon into his short marriage to the late television host Charlotte Dawson.
“Alan’s got his opinion on how things should be done, and his controlling was in my best interest,” Miller says. “But I felt that I needed to make my own decisions. I needed to be wrong.”
Getting back in the water after 15 years to train for the Masters was a struggle. “I had a lot of bad feelings attached to [the water],” he says. “It turned to hatred and fear. I didn’t even want to have a shower. That’s how bad it was.”
Miller finds public speaking easier, sharing his story with young people, through Alcohol and Drug Awareness Australia in Victoria.
“They’re captivated because my story’s raw. It’s true and it’s hectic and they’re in a shock,” he says. “Their eyes don’t leave me and their jaws hit the ground. I get a lot of them coming up to me afterwards and saying, ‘Mate, that was full on, you’ve given me a different perspective’. I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to help someone.”
Deep End: The Scott Miller Story premieres at 8pm on Monday, June 22, the ABC and ABC iview.
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Bridget McManus is a television writer and critic for Green Guide. She was deputy editor of Green Guide from 2006 to 2010 and now also writes features and interviews for Life & Style in The Saturday Age and M magazine in The Sunday Age.
