Touching moment from rivals caps golden career as Cate Campbell’s Paris dream dashed
Cate Campbell warmed up at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre, in the same warm-up pool she had used as a nine-year-old before her first major swimming competition. Twenty-three years later, aged 32, she knew this would be it - a final shot at qualifying for a fifth Olympics.
On Friday, the final of her pet event, the 100m freestyle, had evaded her by one hundredth of a second. To finish in the top two of a crack 50m freestyle final field on Saturday was a steep ask, and that failure would mean no Paris in six weeks and probably no more doing what she has done for the good part of two decades.
Still, she warmed up for the first final in the last session of the Australian Olympic trials. Then she walked from the marshalling area to take her place behind the blocks, at a pool she has known well since she moved with her parents and five siblings to Brisbane from Malawi in 2001.
“I looked up at the stands to the spot where my dad used to [sit],” Campbell said. “He used to buy every newspaper under the sun because he had a swimming carnival to sit through for two days, which is one of the most boring things you can do for a weekend - especially when your children only swim 50m so you’re there for four rounds of 30 seconds.
“This place and this sport have embedded themselves so deeply into me that I just feel really, really privileged that if it was going to end, it was going to end this way, in front of this crowd and the people who I love.”
Cate Campbell is surrounded by her fellow competitors after swimming the final of the women’s 50m freestyle.
Campbell, who made her Olympic debut at Beijing 2008, took 18 months off after the Tokyo Games in 2021 but made a comeback with a Paris swansong in mind. Her seventh place in the 50m confirmed that the two relay gold medals and 100m bronze she won in Tokyo, after carrying the Australian flag at the opening ceremony, will go down as her last.
“It is bittersweet,” she said. “I had hoped for the fairytale ending and it’s what I had worked for and what I felt I was capable of. Unfortunately, my body just said ‘no’. Swimming is one of the most gruelling sports out there, and I’ve been at it for a very, very long time.”
Then her voice broke. “This is the end, and it’s a perfect way to exit the pool.”
Campbell gets a hug from sister Bronte.
It was perfect because of what happened after the race. After Shayna Jack had touched the wall first with a personal-best 23.99 seconds and Meg Harris had qualified second in 24.26, and after Emma McKeon had come third to confirm she will defend neither her 50m or 100m Tokyo golds.
Once they had all come up for air, every one of Campbell’s rivals – including sister Bronte, who finished fifth but has already made the 100m relay team – made their way over to lane seven and formed a huddle around the veteran sprint star for a post-race embrace to cement the legacy of a sporting great.
“That they [Jack and Harris] put their celebrations on hold and came over is one of the most incredible moments and something that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life,” Campbell said.
“I started in this sport because I was a little girl who loved swimming. I did - I loved it more than anything else. Over the years, that love has been tried and tested and that relationship has been pushed to its absolute limits and its breaking point.
“But I walked out tonight and I remembered that little girl who walked out behind those blocks for the first time, and I remembered the joy and the love that I have for this sport, and I was able to do that in front of my friends and family and loved ones.”
Saturday night also doubled as disappointment for Australia’s most successful Olympian McKeon, who has qualified for the relay team but will not contest an individual race at which she won four gold medals and seven overall.
“It definitely wasn’t what I wanted,” McKeon said. “But you don’t always get the result that you want, and I think it’s just important that you deal with the success just as well as you deal with the failure. I’ve had plenty of ups and downs throughout my career, and that’s just life I guess.”
The dream is also over for McKeon’s partner Cody Simpson, who placed fifth in the men’s 100m butterfly in 51.79 seconds - a time just short of his personal-best 51.67 but well short of winner Matt Templeton’s 51.15 and Swimming Australia’s qualifying mark of 51.17. It closes the door on the fairytale story the 27-year-old pop star has craved over the past four years since getting back in the pool.
It came as Australia named a 41-strong swim team featuring 22 Olympic debutants. Freestyle sprinter Cam McEvoy, 30, will become the first Australian man to swim at four Olympics. McKeon and Bronte Campbell will also compete at their fourth Games on a team featuring a batch of gold-medal favourites.
Ariarne Titmus, the reigning Olympic champion and world record-holder in both the 200m and 400m freestyle, tops the list along with Kaylee McKeown.
McKeown, who holds word records and Olympic crowns over backstroke’s 100m and 200m, has added the 200m individual medley to her Paris program.
McKeown or Titmus, who also swims the 800m freestyle, could become the first Australian to win three individual golds at a single Games.
At the Tokyo Olympics three years ago, Australia’s swimmers collected nine gold, three silver and eight bronze medals - the nation’s best haul at the pool.
The Dolphins carry the bulk of Australia’s hopes for a successful campaign in Paris: swimmers have won 71 of the nation’s 167 gold medals at the Olympics.