Olympic Champion Kaylee McKeown Will Move Back to USC Spartans

Australian swimming superstar Kaylee McKeown has announced that she will return to the Sunshine Coast to train with the University of the Sunshine Coast Spartans.

She made the announcement on her Instagram account on Thursday morning after scratching the 200 backstroke, one of her primary events, at the Australian Open (which is not the selection meet for this year’s World Championships).

McKeown, 23, has spent the last 3 years training at Griffith University. That program also recently saw the departure of one of its other stars, Lani Pallister, whose mom is a coach there. She left to train with Dean Boxall at St. Peter’s Western.

British coach Mel Marshall, most famous for her work with World Record holding British breaststroker Adam Peaty, is the current coach at Griffith and has been McKeown’s trainer, albeit through a post-Olympic period where she has taken some breaks from competition. Marshall took over the role after legendary coach Michael Bohl had a brief retirement ‘test’ before taking a position in China.

The school is located about 50 minutes north of her native Redcliffe, Queensland, and her older sister and fellow Olympian Taylor McKeown already commented “I guess this means I’ll be seeing you more” on the post. Griffith is located about the same distance in the other direction from Redcliffe.

McKeown will be coached by Michael Sage, who took over the USC program in December 2024 after Michael Palfrey was fired for his comments supporting a South Korean swimmer during the Paris Olympics (he also popped up in China).

She has never been afraid of making training changes: after winning gold in the 100 and 200 backstroke at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the first Australian woman to win a backstroke event at the Olympics, she moved mid-quad to train with Bohl – and won both again in Paris.

She had even more success after the move, becoming the first woman to break the long course World Records and the 50, 100, and 200 meter backstroke during her career, and the first woman to hold them concurrently as well.

In 2024, she became the first woman to successfully defend the 100 and 200 backstroke Olympic Games.

As she heads into the peak years of her career, she’s on the move again. She will join a club where she will be far-and-away the star, but that has a lot of young talent. Among USC’s current big names include Alex Perkins, who won three medals at Short Course Worlds in December; three-time Australian Olympic relay bronze medalist Zac Incerti; Olympic 200 butterflier Abbey Connor; Commonwealth Games sprinter Tom Novakowski; and a group of national age medalists.

The program is also home to a large number of Paralympians, including Emily Beecroft, Liam Schluter, Jenna Jones, and 7-time Paralympic medalist Lakeisha Patterson.