Australia’s swim capital
THE Gold Coast could provide up to a third of the Australian swim squad for the Commonwealth Games following national team coach Michael Bohl’s decision to relocate his high performance line-up to Griffith University.
Rumours have circulated about a Bohl move to the Coast for more than nine months as Griffith University put the finishing touches to their aquatic centre.
And while he denied a move to the Bulletin last November, speculation continued to grow when Swimming Australia announced Griffith as one of its nine high performance centres, while leaving Bohl’s St Peters Western program off the list.
“It’s official,” Bohl said yesterday, confirming he and his elite squad, including six Australian team members would relocate from Brisbane in the coming weeks.
“They’ve been speaking to me since December last year but it’s just been making sure that everything is lined up.
“You don’t want to be going from a situation like St Peters where everything’s going well to a situation where you didn’t have enough lane space or the support and it’s just taken a while to nut it all out and make sure all the ducks are in a row.
“We’re ready to start in the next couple of weeks or so.”
Bohl’s squad will include new swimming golden girl Emma McKeon, who won six medals at last month’s world championships in Budapest.
She will be joined by brother David McKeon and Grant Irvine, who also competed at Budapest, and Rio Olympians Madeline Groves, Georgia Bohl and Gold Coast product Daniel Smith.
Bohl said it was a difficult decision to leave St Peters, the Brisbane school where he has coached for the past 14 years.
“We’ve had a lot of success there. Every Olympic cycle we were there – 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016 – we had people that medalled at every one of those,” Bohl said.
“When you’ve had that success, it’s hard to leave an environment like that but I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t think Griffith, moving forward, couldn’t provide that same situation.”
Bohl’s move makes the Gold Coast the epicentre of Australian swimming heading into the Games, with the city set to provide up to a third of the national team from programs at Griffith, Bond University, TSS, Somerset College and Southport.
The city has always been a strong swimming region, providing multiple swimmers to Olympic, world championship and Commonwealth Games teams.
But the arrival of Bohl and emergence of Griffith as a national high performance centre, is another boost for the sport.
“Obviously it’s great to get that branding as a high performance centre,” Bohl said.
“It just shows that Swimming Australia are prepared to back that program that you’ve got and I think that’s a positive for sure.”