You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has written a memoir of her journey into adulthood, which is difficult to read so graphically well does it

capture the pain and trauma of growing up deeply unhappy and isolated. Casey Legler's youth was to a

large extent determined by her body. She was six feet two inches tall by the time she was 12, with long limbs and

remarkably large hands and feet. It was the perfect physique for a swimmer, but Casey hated the

reality of competitive swimming, the dehumanizing focus on discipline and physique. She rebelled. She began to drink alcohol to excess.

She started to take and then deal in drugs. Her swimming career came crashing down at the Atlanta Olympics in

1996. Since then, she's conquered addiction, challenged conventional gender and sexual stereotypes, pursued a career in art

and in modelling at that. But how hard was it to emerge from the darkness? Well, Casey Legler

joins me in the studio now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thanks for having me. You come here having just

written a rather extraordinary memoir of your early life, the first 21 years or so of your life.

It is raw, it is full of pain and it exposes some of the very dark places in your own life. How hard was it to

write? First, I just want to say that it's great to be here. I told you before we started that

I'm a huge fan, but my wife is a massive fan. And I've done, I grew up watching. It's great having

you here, but I fear that some of what we talk about is going to be quite tough. Yeah, and I knew

that. I do ask a lot of my reader. Five years ago, I truly sat down and decided to write this short memoir about growing up in

girlhood as a young Olympian, as a young addict.

Let's look back at the 10-year-old Casey Legler, raised primarily in France, although your

parents were American and your dad was a professional

sportsman. He was a basketball player. And by the age of 10, 11, 12, it was clear that your body,

your physique was pretty remarkable for a girl. You'd grown to be six foot tall. You had extraordinarily long limbs, big hands and feet.

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