Simpson sets his sights on Games
Social media dumped as Cody focuses
CODY Simpson 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 from his return to swimming, his music, to poetry and his well-publicised relationships such as with fellow singer Miley Cyrus.
“I used to get six hours on this or that and I’d be ‘oh sh-t, 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. I would just constantly be going ‘this post only got this many views’. “
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 in December that hampered his schedule for two months. Then there was Covid.
“It hit me really hard – I was bedridden,” Simpson said. “I thought I was going to die. It was so bad.”
He worried the virus had permanently damaged his lungs. It took him weeks after rising from his sick bed to again get back to full training.
“That was tough but I feel I’ve come out of the other side.”
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 he trains with now.
“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’ Everyone from Grant to Michael to Ian. Which was really encouraging.”
While Simpson planned to put his musical career on hold to solely focus on his four-year journey to Paris, he released his self-titled album last month. It was recorded in eight days in the US before he moved back home. “I think it’s good to have something to take your mind off swimming,” Simpson says.
“I think it can be almost counterintuitive to be 100 per cent in something 24/7. It’s almost like it works in reverse, you just get sick of it.”
There are, however, no touring plans in his future.