Campbell goes above and beyond in the pool
SWIMMING’S freestyle sprint queen Cate Campbell is leaving no stone unturned as she sets her sights on a return to this year’s Fina World Swimming Championships in Korea in July.
As she approaches her 27th birthday later this month, the Queenslander is loving her rejuvenated life in Sydney and she showed why with an eyecatching 100m freestyle heat swim to kickstart the three-day Sydney Open Swim Meet at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre yesterday.
Campbell has her sights on a fourth World Championship team after taking a break from the previous worlds meet in Hungary in 2017 – a hiatus that has rejuvenated her career.
She is one of a host of swimming’s biggest names who will line up in a three-day Sydney Open Meet which doubles as the Unisport Nationals in an exciting new addition to the National Swimming calendar.
Campbell cruised to victory in the eighth and final heat of the 100m freestyle in a new Unisport record time of 53.92 in an ominous warning ahead of next month’s World Championship trials in Brisbane.
“This will be our last chance to race before those trials so it is really important to hone those skills that I’ve been practising,” Campbell said.
“This meet becomes really important and to think that in my event, the women’s 100m freestyle, out of the top five people in the world three of them (sister Bronte and Emma McKeon) are from Australia.”
In other highlights yesterday morning Bond University’s Jenna Strauch was the fastest qualifier for the 100m breaststroke final ahead of Griffith Uni pair Georgia Bohl and Taylor McKeown.