Cody Miller can’t help but stand out when he’s walking around the pool.

The first thing that’ll jump out is his sunken-in chest. The medical terminology for it is pectus excavatum, a deformity that diminishes his lung capacity by anywhere from 12 to 20 percent. To make matters worse, he also has mild asthma.

Then comes his height. Miller stands at just 5-foot-11 and weights 175 pounds. Among breaststroker’s who are typically anywhere from 6-foot-2 to 6-foot-5, Miller seems out of place.

And he knows it.

“I look kind of funny,” Miller said. “People see me in a suit and they’ve never seen a chest like that before. It looks weird. It looks like I have a gaping hole in my chest. People are always like, ‘whaaat?’”

None of that has slowed Miller down. If anything, it’s made the 24-year-old American faster en route to qualifying to compete in the 100-meter breaststroke and perhaps the 4x100m medley relay in this month’s Olympic Games.

“I think, in a way, it all kind of helped me,” Miller said, “because I knew that I had to do all the little things right.”

You know, the little things.

Like going to bed every night by 9:30 p.m. That includes weekends.

Like staying on a strict diet. Miller eats anywhere from five to eight meals a day of mostly green vegetables like spinach.

Like never missing practice—ever. Miller, who was Indiana’s first U.S. swimmer to qualify for the Olympics in four decades, never passes on a workout.

“It’s a simple statistic, but the guy never misses practice,” Indiana head swimming coach Ray Looze said. “He’s a great example of what could happen if you have that longer-term approach.”

Ironically, the only reason Miller began swimming in the first place was because his mother, Debra, couldn’t swim.

He jokes that she probably hates that he brings that up as often as he does, but her decision ended up sparking an Olympic journey that took her son from Las Vegas to Indiana University and now Rio.

Miller graduated from Indiana in 2015 but remained in Bloomington to train. He treats swimming like a full-time job. Just last year, he won gold as part of the 400m IM relay at the 2015 FINA World Championships to go along with a ninth place finish in the 100-meter breaststroke.

He's been around the sport so much that Looze calls Miller the “grizzled veteran” of Indiana’s Olympians.

“Cody is tough,” Looze said. “He’s a guy with a chip on his shoulder. We talked a little about making sure that chip remain there because he’s had a lot of success, especially in the last two years.

“Honestly, in a weird way, I think some of the things people look at with Cody—his size or his sunken chest—I think those are his strongest attributes.”

Miller will take that chip with him to Rio where he’s not entirely sure what to expect. He knows the odds of winning a medal on the sport’s biggest stage will probably be against him.

Not that that’s slowed him down before.

“Like every athlete, you want to reach the pinnacle of your sport,” Miller said. “The Olympics is that for swimming. Taking that next step and winning a medal would be really cool. I’m positioned well in the world rankings and I definitely feel like I can swim faster.”