Bronte Campbell is a bit fatalistic these days. “I think in a good way,” she clarifies. What she means is she has some welcome perspective. The former world champion is trying not over-think the immeasurable challenge of next week’s Olympic swimming trials, the path to what she says would likely be her third and final Games.
If she does not make it to Tokyo, she will appreciate her decade in the pool, and revel in the possibility of what might come next once she hops out of it.
“There is sort of more riding on it, but at the same time I’m sort of looking at my whole swimming journey as a whole,” Campbell says. “Just because this is the last one, or the full stop, it doesn’t necessarily mean any more than the whole rest of it that came before.
“I’ve really enjoyed the last 10 years being a swimmer. This next bit is just a whole different curveball adventure. It’s a very different perspective now from when I made my first team when I was 17. Not in that you don’t care about it, but it’s a lot more relaxed.”
At 27, Campbell has accumulated her wisdom via means most swimmers would decidedly not fancy. Her maturity has come from baffling chronic injuries in her shoulder, neck and hip which have sucked her dry for the past five years, and her resilience from winning gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games regardless.
Perhaps it is that the postponement of the Games, while initially difficult to accept, has since allowed her time to take stock of a career also including 50m and 100m freestyle triumphs at the 2015 world championships and an Olympic gold medal in the 4x100m at Rio 2016.
Campbell’s tough slog features heavily in Amazon Prime Video’s four-part documentary, Head Above Water, which premieres on 4 June and also follows Rio Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers and Cody Simpson, and interviews Ian Thorpe.
“In 2016, when it first started, I didn’t want to show anyone because I thought it was a show of weakness,” Campbell says. “Now I talk about it a lot. That’s not a negative thing. It’s positive in that, even if you’re carrying a lot of pain in your body, there’s a way to make it work for you, to still better yourself.
“I’ve been injured for five years, which is half of my swimming career, and I wouldn’t ever have thought that you can be injured and still perform at your best, which was what 2018 was all about for me.”
Campbell’s body was held together by sticky tape and physiotherapy when she upset older sister Cate on the Gold Coast to win the 100m in Commonwealth-record time. Now, it is just about “holding together” as she tapers for the 50m and 100m at the trials starting on 12 June in Adelaide.
Cate and Emma McKeon lurk are her main rivals in the 100m, with only the top two earning a ticket to an Olympics she expects will be “even more different and weird” than her last two. If she makes it, what the Tokyo field will look like is anyone’s guess.
“We haven’t seen the rest of the world swim for over a year, and so much changes in the year,” she says. “Olympics is all about timing because it’s the top person on a certain day, once every four years. And now it’s been pushed back a year, so that advantages some people and disadvantages other people, so it’s really hard to predict what’s going to happen.
“No one predicted the global pandemic, right? So I’m just excited to hopefully be a part of it. The idea of the whole world coming together, given what’s gone on globally. The power of sport to unite people and bring stories we would never have heard to the forefront, is something I feel quite strongly about.”
Campbell is a “proper Olympic fan”. Her first port of call after retirement is to be a spectator at a Games so she can watch the buzz from outside the bubble. She likes the diving, gymnastics and rowing, is being introduced to hockey by flatmates who play, and is training at the gym with some track-and-field athletes.
After it’s all over, she will use her degree in business and public relations as a platform for career No 2. “The pull of the outside world for me is that I’ve been doing the same thing for 10 years and I can’t wait to experiment and see what else I can do,” she says. “I know you’re supposed to be really nervous about it, but I’m just excited. I’m just looking forward to the ride.
“I think Tokyo’s probably going to be my last Olympics. I can’t say 100% because I can’t predict the future, but I don’t see myself going through to Paris. It might not be my last swim meet – there’s still Commonwealth Games and world championships next year – but it will most likely be my last Olympics.”
