Is Ariarne Titmus our only hope for Olympic Gold?
Eighteen-year-old swimmer Ariarne Titmus is such a powerhouse that she’s earned comparisons to The Terminator. Could she also be Australia’s best hope for Olympic glory in the pool in more than a decade?
Stellar
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As a young girl growing upin Launceston, riding horses and routinely hitting her family’s 15-metre swimming pool after school, Ariarne Titmus was sure of only one thing: she was going to be a hairdresser.
But time, talent and a remarkable toughness changed her destiny in ways a little girl from northern Tasmania could scarcely imagine.
Now 18, her dreams involve pools, podiums and glittering gold medals.
“I want to be an Olympian,” Titmus, who has emerged as one of Australia’s most formidable distance swimmers, tells Stellar. “Next year, if I get to go to Tokyo [for the Summer Olympics], that will be a dream come true.”
On her current form, it’s highly likely. At last year’s Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, “Arnie” (as in the erstwhile Terminator) claimed three gold medals and a silver; in December at the World Short Course Championships in China, she won the 200m and swam the 400m freestyle in world-record time.
And at August’s Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Tokyo, she earned a silver in the 800m freestyle and set a Commonwealth record for the 400m freestyle, finishing just 1.16 seconds behind America’s Katie Ledecky, a five-time Olympic gold medallist and 14-time world champion.
For the then 17-year-old schoolgirl, it was a career-best time. For her coach Dean Boxall, it marked the moment Titmus may have awakened what he referred to at the time as “the giant”.
Speaking to Stellar months later, he still doesn’t hold back.
“Two years ago,” he says, “Arnie wasn’t even on the map. She was just a junior swimmer trying to fight her way onto the Australian team. [Now] she’s trying to go up against one of the greatest female swimmers ever. [But] we have to make sure we get on the Olympic team first.”
The 1.77m powerhouse credits a strong working relationship with Boxall for her success. “That has played a massive role in my improvement — he understands me as a person and as a swimmer better than I know myself,” says Titmus, who started competing at age seven. “I was racing eight and unders and ever since I haven’t stopped.”
But Boxall wasn’t the first to influence Titmus. At 14, competing in the national age championships in Sydney, the young swimmer met Olympian Janelle Elford, who dispensed a key piece of advice: “You have to learn to love pain — and when you feel that pain, you push harder.”
Titmus has never forgotten it. “She loves the pain, mate,” confirms Boxall. “Absolutely loves it. She’s as tough as nails.”
Where some dread the pre-dawn starts, Titmus relishes the grind.
“I’ve always prided myself on being a really hard trainer,” she says. “I’m not the most naturally talented swimmer and I’ve definitely got to where I am because of hard work.”
And she’s the first to acknowledge the sacrifices of her family. In 2015 her parents Robyn, a former champion runner, and Steve, a journalist and former cricketer, quit their jobs, packed up their lives in Launceston and relocated to Brisbane to maximise Titmus’s opportunities, her sister Mia in tow.
It was, as their trophy room will attest, a lucrative decision.
“Ariarne has all the qualities that make you a champion,” says three-time Olympic gold medallist Stephanie Rice, whose own dominance of the pool at the 2008 Beijing Olympics transfixed a then seven-year-old Titmus.
“[Titmus] is a tough racer, determined and completely focused on being the best,” Rice tells Stellar. “I’m confident she’ll have a very bright future.”
Also clear in her memories is American Michael Phelps, who took home eight gold medals at those same Games. “I’m in awe of him,” says Titmus.
“I think the dedication Phelps had was on another level,” she continues. “That is something [Boxall] drills into me: champions just do things that are unheard of. Everyone can train hard, everyone can put in the hours, but champions do that little bit extra.
“Some people might complain about not getting Christmas off, but this bloke trained for five years straight without even having a Sunday off. That stuck with me.”
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Some days Boxall will write up insanely intense fake training plans to see how Titmus reacts. And, he says, “She never baulks at them. She just says, ‘Ah, OK.’ I really love that attitude. She trusts me in what I do and I trust her to execute it.
“I have been so hard on her, but she’s never refused to do anything; she just gets stuck into it.”
Next are July’s world championships in South Korea, and beyond that the Tokyo Olympics next year.
Her main rival is Katie Ledecky, who pipped her by a fingernail at the Pan Pacifics.
But to Titmus, she’s “just someone else I race. I get excited to race her because she’s someone I can chase — and hopefully that gets more out of me.
“If it’s enough to win, that’s great. If it’s not, then it’s still great; the person who won was just better than me on the day,” she says.
“Just to go to an Olympics would be amazing. But, ultimately, everyone’s dream is a gold medal.”
Hairdressing might have been an easier ask, but a decade on, all those early starts, impossible goals, dizzying triumphs and heartbreaking losses have laid one truth bare: Titmus doesn’t do easy.
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Originally published as Is Ariarne Titmus our only hope for Olympic Gold?
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