MEDALS TRUMP ‘FAMILY’ FEUDS
YOU could write a book on feuds and the relationships inside the Australian swim team. People want to talk about the awkward encounter between Emma McKeon and Kyle Chalmers from the relay on night one, but compared to some of the feuds I’ve seen on the team that’s barely a drop in the ocean.
There’s been busted-up relationships in the past and plenty of swimmers who didn’t get along, but usually you never heard about it.
The most intense feud I’ve ever seen involved two of the biggest star athletes in the team at the time who actually trained together under Michael Bohl.
It was a feud which pretty much split the swim team down the middle. One side didn’t talk to the other. And for some of us younger swimmers, we looked on with bated breath.
It was never really spoken about publicly, but those two swimmers could not stand being in the same room as each other.
Despite this, when they walked out on pool deck, it was business as usual. The show rolled on.
Feuds are nothing new in the swim team. When you have a team of more than 40 competitors it’s obvious not everyone is going to get along all the time. Often the feud involves people of the same gender because we are competitors.
We want to win.
The best thing now is that this Australian team is in the middle of the meet.
When you think how busy some of them were last night, in and out of the warm-down pool and straight into the relay and medal ceremony, they’re so busy they don’t have time to think about personal relationships or feuds or anything like that.
And a relay team can still win gold as long as everyone does their job.
The mixed relay team, let’s admit, it’s the egg and spoon race of the pool. Good fun, but it’s not the event we get up at 5am for training or dream about winning.
Swimming is an individual sport and because we’re self-centred athletes we’re so busy worrying about ourselves most of the time you don’t notice what is transpiring around you. There will always be big personalities and clashes of ego, but all is fair in love and war.
This team, off the back of the success in Tokyo, earnt the right to an extended staging camp in Europe.
They came through that virtually unscathed and relationships intact.
The hardest part is when you’re spending a lot of time in each other’s pockets at the staging camps and in the village before racing starts. We’re in Birmingham now and the ‘golds’ are already flowing, so play on.
This supposed tension with Emma and Kyle is a bit of an extra dynamic, but it’s not new and just makes for interesting media talk.
Emma is the best female swimmer in the world.
Kyle thrives off this sort of thing. Watch the gold medals come streaming in regardless of what’s going on around them.
Kyle reads everything and uses it as fuel – he will probably read this article. He wears his heart on his sleeve along with those tattoos and diamond earrings. As Aussies we should get around that.
Everyone has their own methods of getting fired up for competition while maintaining their focus.
For me personally, I didn’t read anything written about me. At times, that was probably for the best.
With social media now athletes can be copping it from all angles while trying to stay composed for racing. It’s a delicate balance and what separates the best from the rest.
One thing I am certain of, knowing both Emma and Kyle very well, they will have a single focus this week and that is the swimming pool.
Commonwealth Golds with a side of reality TV drama, yes please.