Cate’s taking golden angle
CATE Campbell is resigned to being ineligible for a third Queensland Sport Star award while she chases more gold medals at the world swimming championships and Olympics.
Brisbane’s triple Commonwealth Games gold medallist will leave in January for Sydney, from where she and sister Bronte will train with their relocated coach Simon Cusack.
Cusack is taking a job with the NSW Institute of Sport and the Campbell sisters did not want to change coaches with the 2019 world championships in Gwangju, South Korea, coming up in July, followed by the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
On Wednesday, Campbell, 26, was presented with her second Courier-Mail/Channel 7 Queensland Sport Star award at a function at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The night also included the naming of Queensland Sport’s 100 Greatest, the series which ran in the Gold Coast Bulletin.
Peter Cummiskey, CEO of Q Sport, which organises the Queensland Sport Awards, said the eligibility of athletes for the state’s annual top sporting award must be decided on a case-by-case basis.
“It’s my last for a few years. I’ll be away for a few years,’’ Cate Campbell said.
“He’s been my coach for 17 years now and when he was called to the Sydney program, it meant I will be leaving, but I’ll be back.’’
In January, the Campbell sisters will both be training and living in Sydney.
“From the time I touch down in Sydney and start making a home there, it will be 20 months until Tokyo 2020, so it comes around incredibly quickly,’’ Cate Campbell said.
Campbell said she would be out of the training pool until Monday while a scar on her upper arm, from where she had a skin cancer removed, heals.
The winner of the state award for an athlete with a disability, Gold Coast canoeist Curtis McGrath, took it out on the basis of his two latest world titles landed in his 2018 campaign.