I’ve given up social media for my sport
CODY Simpson says he is so committed to the Paris 2024 Olympics, he’s deleted all social media from his phone.
The pop idol-turned-athlete has 4.6 million Instagram followers whom he has regularly kept up-to-date on all things.
“I used to get six hours on this or that and I’d be ‘oh shit, this is not good’,” Simpson said.
“I had to make a change. It actually feels really nice.
“I won’t stop sharing what I’m doing – I just don’t want to get sucked into caring about what 600 other people are doing daily. Or reading negative things for one, but also positive ones. None of them make a difference in my daily happiness and they shouldn’t. I think more people need to realise you can get pretty caught up in it. “It would affect my emotional wellbeing.”
He’s confident about his prospects at next week’s Australian Swimming Championships in Adelaide where the national swim team will be selected for the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. That’s despite a fairly interrupted six months of training. First there was a nasty shoulder injury and then a bout of Covid.
Simpson was a talented junior who stopped swimming after becoming a global recording sensation. He only made a serious return in 2020 after more than a decade on the sidelines. He says he now feels very much an integral part of the community.
“I don’t know how I got so lucky to have been patted on the back by pretty much all of the great swimmers in Australia, and the world’s, history,” Simpson says.
“I’ve had mentorship and guidance from (US swimming superstar) Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe and obviously Grant Hackett. None of those great swimmers said ‘you’re crazy. Don’t do this’ which is what I thought one or two would.
“They were all like ‘hell, yeah do it’.”