Ariarne pulls out all stops for Tokyo

ARIARNE Titmus, one of Australian swimming’s biggest hopes for this year’s Tokyo Olympics, has been secretly working with Wayne Bennett’s fitness guru to get her gold medal dreams back on track after missing three months of critical training while battling a shoulder injury.

While speculation about her injured shoulder has been swirling around Australian pool decks since her mysterious absence from a pre-Olympic training camp, the true extent of her problems have remained a closely-kept secret — until now.

Finally given the all-clear to make her return to racing at this week’s Australian championships on the Gold Coast after skipping several key warm-up events, Titmus (pictured) and her coach Dean Boxall have revealed the extraordinary rehabilitation she has undergone to get back in shape.

Prime among these has been recruiting Jeremy Hickmans, the famed Queensland fitness trainer who worked alongside Bennett for over a decade, winning NRL premierships with Brisbane and St George-Illawarra, before he was unceremoniously dumped by the Broncos after the supercoach’s messy departure to South Sydney.

“We’ve got some unbelievable people involved, like Peter Wells, who’s been an Olympic physio for three Olympics and Jeremy Hickmans, who was Wayne Bennett’s right-hand man,” Boxall said.

Still, there’s no escaping the realisation that three months spent out of full training is a setback for Titmus. But “Arnie” says she’s not using that as an excuse and is confident her shoulder has healed, leaving her just over 100 days to get back in mint condition.

“It’s been frustrating more than anything because I’ve not been able to do the work I feel that I need to do to be at my best,” Titmus said. “But I’ve had an amazing team around me … I feel like I’m definitely getting back on track.”