EMMA MCKEON

It was a Wednesday afternoon in January when Emma McKeon decided she wanted to get a tattoo. She’d finished training for the day and felt the urge to do the thing she’d been putting off for while: have the five Olympic rings inked on her wrist. She didn’t know then that seven months later she’d become the most decorated Australian Olympian. Ever. “At that point, I wasn’t sure if the Olympics were going to go ahead or not,” the 27-year-old explains. “I’d always wanted to get it since Rio [in 2016], so I just did it.”

This kind of blunt tenacity is trademark McKeon. She needn’t bother with embellishment, letting her hard work speak for itself. At the Tokyo Olympics, the Wollongong-born swimmer competed in seven events and came away with a medal for every one, including four golds, making her the first female swimmer to be the top medallist at an Olympic Games. When added to the four medals she won at the games in Rio de Janeiro, her performance at Tokyo saw her become Australia’s most decorated Olympian.

“It was overwhelming to see that I was racing every day in every session. But I knew that I was prepared,” she recalls of how she approached the games.

McKeon is endlessly humble about her success. She wasn’t even aware she’d become the most decorated Australian Olympian until a journalist asked her about it in an interview. As for what’s next, she says simply, “Just doing things that genuinely make me happy and being around people who I love.” We’d say she’s more than deserved that.