Scooping the pools
Rising star leads the way for sizzling Aussie swim team
AUSTRALIA’S swimmers have won four medals at the Tokyo Olympics to lift the team’s total to an unfathomable 29 with two days of competition to go.
One of the rising stars of the Dolphins para swim team, Tim Hodge won silver in the 200m individual medley classification.
Born with just three fingers on his right hand and had his right leg amputated below the knee when he was a toddler, the 20-year-old from Sydney collected his second medal in Japan with a powerful swim.
Australia also won three bronze medals in the pool, courtesy of Blake Cochrane, Tiffany Thomas Kane and Tom Gallagher.
New dad Cochrane came third in the men’s 100m breaststroke, giving him a full set of medals after he won gold in London in 2012 and silver in Beijing (2008) and Rio (2016). He also won a relay gold in London and with his bronze from Tokyo he joins a select band of Aussie swimmers to win medals at four successive Games.
“That is what we’re here to do, isn’t it? We spend all those hours in the pool training and working so hard towards what we want to do and what we want to achieve,” he said.
“I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it and I wouldn’t be able to do it if I didn’t have the people supporting me.”
Cochrane, who has a congenital limb deficiency affecting his hands and feet, had been planning to retire after Tokyo but the 12-month postponement coupled with becoming father for the first time has given him a change of heart.
“If you had asked me that same question 18 months ago I would have said no way. I would have said I’m calling it quits after Tokyo,” he said. “After having a bit of a spell out of the pool throughout Covid lockdowns and taking a slightly different approach, not training twice a day, being able to train in the mornings and work in the afternoons and be able to spend time with family and friends.
“It has been the best mental health space I have been in for a very long time.”
Thomas Kane won bronze in 100m breaststroke to claim her second medal in Japan after also coming third in the medley. The reigning world champion, she won a gold in Rio when she was in her teens but said just getting on the podium this time was a major achievement.
“I was going into that race wanting more. But after the year I‘ve had, it’s paid off. I’m coming home with another medal, it’s better than nothing,” she said. “There’s been Covid, and there‘s been every other sort of thing. I ruptured my liver at the beginning of the year so it’s really shown that a lot of that time out of the water has hit. But I’m happy with what I got.”
Born with hypochondroplasia, which gives a shorter stature, Tiffany Kane rewarded herself after Rio by getting a tattoo on her wrist of the Agitos, the Paralympic symbol, but says she’s unsure how she will commemorate her success in Japan.
“I got it in 2017. I was still underage, but I went and got it. I snuck in and got it,” she said. “I had to bring my mum of course. I was like, ‘I got to get it’. I went to Rio, I’m a Paralympian, why not? I’ll think of something if my mother allows me.”
Gallagher, a former life saver who only took up swimming seriously last year, won bronze in the men’s 400m freestyle.