Cate Campbell Opens Up On Decision To Come Back, Put Full Focus On Paris 2024

After taking an extended break from swimming after the Tokyo Olympics, Cate Campbell is back with her full focus geared toward qualifying for a fifth Australian Olympic team next summer in Paris.

Campbell, who returned to official competition last month and was in action this week at the Australian Championships in Queensland, spoke on the trepidation she was feeling towards the sport coming into the week, set to go up against the country’s best for the first time in nearly two years.

“I’m feeling the most uncomfortable I have about swimming in a very long time. I’m not really sure what to expect,” Campbell told The Courier-Mail.

“It’s the first opportunity to see the competition I’ll be up against.”

Regarding potentially walking away from the sport for good, the 30-year-old said she never reached the point where she felt like she was done with swimming.

“I asked lots of other retired athletes and while they all had different reasons for leaving they all said ‘when you know…you know’. I didn’t have that sense of knowing.

“When I came back from Tokyo, I was exhausted in every sense of the word. But I wasn’t out of love with swimming and the Olympic element that comes with it.”

At the Australian Championships this week, which are still ongoing, Campbell placed third in the women’s 50 free (24.88) and tied for fifth in the 100 free (53.78). Shayna Jack, 24, won the 50 free in a time of 24.45, while 19-year-old Mollie O’Callaghan (52.63) and Jack (52.64) went 1-2 in the 100 free.

Campbell will be back in action at the Australian World Championship Trials in June, but won’t compete in Fukuoka regardless of her results.

“Paris is the end goal,” she said, according to Fox Sports in Australia.

“I’m doing everything in my power to be fit and ready to perform at my absolute best because it will be the last time I get in a swimming pool.

“I have this deep sense of knowing that working towards Paris is going to be the last time that I put together an Olympic preparation, that I will compete (for) my country if I qualify.

“The focus has very much shifted to ensuring that I’m at my absolute best for that.”

 

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Campbell will compete on the Mare Nostrum Tour in Europe next month in the lead-up to World Trials, and says Swimming Australia has been supportive of her decision to opt out of the 2023 World Championships.

Campbell will have her work cut out for her in order to qualify for the Paris Olympics, with O’Callaghan and Jack joined by the likes of Emma McKeon, Meg Harris and Madison Wilson in Australia’s stacked crop of sprint freestylers.

However, Campbell is still the Australian Record holder in the 50 free (23.78), and ranks third all-time in the 100 free behind Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom and McKeon.

“It almost makes me a bit emotional thinking of where I started in this sport 15 years ago and you had to every year, stand up and prove your worth and you were only valued for what you did in the pool.

“I’m so grateful to Swimming Australia for how supportive they’ve been of me taking the time off, for their continued support of me coming back.

“They’ve allowed me to figure out what I think is best for myself and have recognized the contribution that I’ve made over many, many years.

“If I was doing this 15 years ago, I would have had to have left the sport.

“You wouldn’t see athletes be able to take time off and come back – and so I feel that incredible privilege of getting to come back and getting to be around the sport for one last time.”