Lani Pallister is coming off a massive world championships that saw her win a hat trick of medals (gold, silver, bronze) and nearly upset Katie Ledecky in what turned out to be the best race of the entire season. After the departure of Michael Bohl from Gold Coast, Pallister moved training bases with Dean Boxall, but only started at St. Peters Western in April.
Something has certainly clicked for Pallister in Brisbane, however, as the distance specialist has been hitting best times left and right all season. She breaks down her season, her experience in Singapore, and ultimately the decision to go to Brisbane with Boxall (and not the University of Florida).
- 0:00 Lani Pallister Introduction
- 2:10 2-Week Break
- 3:30 800 Free
- 19:44 200/400 Free
- 29:15 Short Course vs Long Course
- 33:00 Not Going to Florida
- 35:30 Dean Boxall
- 41:38 St. Peter’s Training Group
- 46:00 Katie Ledecky
- 51:38 Reading SwimSwam Comments
- 54:10 Flipping the Switch
- 57:24 Not Sharing Workouts
- 1:03:16 World Cup
In the SwimSwam Podcast dive deeper into the sport you love with insider conversations about swimming. Hosted by Coleman Hodges and Gold Medal Mel Stewart, SwimSwam welcomes both the biggest names in swimming that you already know, and rising stars that you need to get to know, as we break down the past, present, and future of aquatic sports.
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Music: Otis McDonald
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Opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the interviewed guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the hosts, SwimSwam Partners, LLC and/or SwimSwam advertising partners.

How is Lani’s camera quality so clear while Coleman’s camera looks like it was filmed on my 20 year old Nintendo DS?
Tom Dean is moving to Strling
Lani just started in April
I really hope that pancake thing happens.. even if not fully serious one ..
Thanks for a great interview Lani and Coleman! Can’t wait to see Lani race again
It was a great interview and it won’t be long before you get to see Lani race again as she mentioned that she will be competing in the upcoming World Cup races in North America.
Excellent interview but Lani is flat wrong about details. Details lead astray. The absolute worst handicappers I knew in Las Vegas were obsessed with every detail. They spent all day every day reading about every injury and every practice and every weather report and every local message board devoted to the team.
And those guys were paralyzed to pull the trigger, or overreacted to the most recent input and dependably flat wrong. Same applies to sports analysts in the media.
Big picture generalities overwhelm specifics. If I watched women’s distance swimmers practice and train every day it would be…wow they are amazing. Instead it’s relaxed comparison to other sports and blatant reality that it’s been an incompetent realm for… Read more »
At around 44:53 Lani alludes to a “new boy” moving to the St Peters distance training group. Any detectives figure out who this might be?
Maybe Quokka will know? They always have some good inside goss.
According to someone on Twitter it’s allegedly Galea
Correct
Isn’t his sister also at SPW?
Another NSW loss?! But it’s much needed for his swimming career as he doesnt seem to be going anywhere in distance events
At least we still have Wunsch here in NSW.
But I wonder if, in the future, she heads north to have some other leading sprint freestylers to train with?
Or will her success with coach Michaela Pattinson keep her here long term?
Wunsch is a difficult one. She was amazing in 2023. Then solid improvement (but nothing crazy) in 2024. This year slower but she’s also had significant long term illness, and she’s not that far off her best.
If I were her I’d probably stay put for another year and if she doesn’t progress then consider moving.
Liv probably owes it to Michaela to stick with her for a while after nearly sending her coach into early labour with the excitement of that anchor leg in the 4×100 Free. 🙂
“Aussie star who almost sent her coach into labour with gold medal swim. Olivia Wunsch almost sent her coach into early labour with her thrilling swim at the World Championships.”
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=TAWEB_WRE170_a_BIN&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theaustralian.com.au%2Fsport%2Folympics%2Frising-australian-swim-star-olivia-wunschs-coach-mikaela-pattinson-reflects-on-her-success%2Fnews-story%2F14efcbee320926154f4d14343db4ed33&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=LOW-Segment-1-SCORE&V21spcbehaviour=append
With Abbey Webb stepping up as well, I think Liv will stay in NSW. Shannon Rollason has a lot to do with Michaela Pattinson, and I think they’ll end up doing some training camps together.
That’d be great if they could work together so Michaela can stay involved the whole way through. I got the impression from her podcast earlier in the year that she’s kinda learning quite a lot as she goes with Liv.
NSW are whipping the floor with QLD at age group level, it’s only a matter of time.
This will be good for Galea. If there’s some additional potential that could be unlocked (like with Lani), then he could be a threat.
The only problem is that Sam Short (if healthy) basically has a spot locked down. He’ll be fighting with Goedemans for the 2nd spot in these events. It might be good for Goedemans to have competition here, especially when they’re training together.
I’d rather that we have great depth in men’s distance racing than thinking Sam short already has a spot secured.. more than likely but anything can still happen and when they do we would have no one else competitive to fall back on ?
A lot of depth could potentially hurt our podium contenders in those events by forcing them to have to fully taper for trials. Basically all the other top contenders either are in countries that lack the depth to force them to full taper, don’t have to do a selection meet or their selection meet is early enough in the season that they can do another block.
Good point. We’ll have to see how Goedemans and Galea develop but Short (at this stage) is far ahead of them to not have to worry about this yet
He wasn’t all that far ahead in the 1500 at trials. He really does seem to need a full taper for his 1500 to pop. Or maybe he just needs to be more careful with his pacing when not fully tapered.
Wish we had the German depth in long distance racing and can have two medallist’s on the podium is all I can really say … I don’t hear them complaining yet about too much depth
The German trials meet is months away from the big meet so not the same situation at all.
He posted on instagram after the Australia A team meet in the US about moving on to new things. For a second I thought it was a retirement post!
I’m hoping this will be great for his swimming. I think he was the hardest done by with the selection policy last year.
Great interview.