Jessica Halloran: How Rio Games heartbreak changed Cate Campbell
AFTER hitting rock bottom, howling alone in a Rio hotel room, Cate Campbell has rediscovered her mojo. The world record-holder tells JESSICA HALLORAN how she got a grip again.
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“SWIMMING, it broke my heart,” Cate Campbell tells me.
The 100m freestyle star’s life fell apart when as the red-hot favourite for 2016 Olympic gold she finished a gut-wrenching sixth in the final.
The result left her howling, in tears. Her whole life had built up to that moment, and when it didn’t go to plan the face of Australian swimming was shattered.
“My world ended when I hit the wall,’’ Campbell, 26, says.
“It was like going through heartbreak. I had to go through a grieving period.
“I had given so much to the sport. Poured so much into it, it essentially became my life and my identity. Suddenly the things I prided myself on, it no longer existed, and I didn’t hate the sport but I didn’t love who I was within the sport.
“I was in a really difficult and lonely place. And it was compounded by the fact I was very aware I was getting this messed up and distressed over sport. People go through real problems and I am here having a meltdown over a swimming race, a swimming race! C’mon, get a grip!”
One of Campbell’s most impressive qualities is her honesty and ability to be vulnerable; she is unafraid to share her worst moments.
One of the greatest swimmers of her generation, she still has not achieved the pinnacle — an individual Olympic gold medal.
Fast forward to this month and there was no hint of that heartbreak on Campbell’s beaming face as she stood on the medal dais in Tokyo. Against a solid international field, she collected five gold medals at the Pan Pacs.
She swam the second-fastest time in history for the 100m freestyle to win (52.03sec). She also clocked the fastest-ever split in the 4x100m freestyle relay (50.93sec).
“I felt relief,” Campbell said of her performance. “This little stone that had been sitting in my heart, it just disappeared.”
Soon after she stepped off the dais with her 100m freestyle gold her coach Simon Cusack gave her a big hug. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t give it away? I am so proud of you.” he said.
Campbell had thought about quitting and in the back her mind she had deep doubts she could dominate an international field again. “Can you do it?” she would often ask herself.
But with five gold medals her once-broken self-belief was revived.
It has been a painful and enlightening trip back to the top.
She can now reveal her rock bottom came in Rio after she’d swum a brilliant freestyle leg to lift the Australian medley team from fifth place to Olympic silver, when she was the only one held back for a drug test.
By the time she arrived back to the Olympic athletes’ village, it was too late to join the other relay girls to celebrate their silver. Instead, Campbell retreated to her room, sat on a small “hard” couch and sobbed.
“I cried like I have probably never cried before, just a gut-wrenching howling,” Campbell said, then adds: “People in the room above were probably going, ‘what is going on down there?’ In that moment, everything hit me. My heart literally broke.
“I had years of conditioning to think that my only value to outside people was my performance in the pool. I was bitterly ashamed and embarrassed that I couldn’t meet those expectations.”
In the months after memories of the race often stopped her sleeping at night. Awful snippets, like going out too hard in the first 50m, haunted her thoughts. She felt grief and anger.
“I still haven’t watched the race yet, I have seen it that many times in my head that I wouldn’t want to watch it,” Campbell said.
“The moment where your stomach drops. You go all cold and clammy.”
It must be noted Campbell returned with gold and silver in the Olympic relays and afterwards fans would tell her, “Oh wow, you did so well in Rio”.
“To me that was like someone drawing their nails down a chalkboard in my mind, that’s how I felt,” she said.
These days she’s cutting herself some slack. Swimming is no longer everything. She is not counting calories so much. Her happiness and identity no longer rely on her success in her sport. That swimming heartbreak changed her.
“I actively look for things that make me happy, in small moments in life, my happiness used to be tied to goals and achieving those things,” she said.
In the past, she’d look at her rivals on the pool deck and feel “incredibly intimidated by people”.
“Because of the fear of losing I’d give the power over to my competitors,” she said. “I’d essentially hand them the winning ticket because I was terrified of what they were going to do, instead of believing in what I could do.”
But at the warm-up pool at the Pan Pacs last week she had an “epiphany”. If her thoughts started to “pop” as she saw her rivals she talked herself around. “Less of them, more of you,” was her mantra. “Back yourself, you can do this.”
In turn, she blitzed it.
Now for the Olympics. Again. For the record she has two gold, one silver and two bronze.
How does she feel heading towards Tokyo 2020? She laughs.
“Every fear that I had going into Rio, everything that I was scared of happening, happened, and life went on, it didn’t stop,” Campbell said.
“My world came crashing down around my ears, but everything else went on. I hit rock bottom and it is an incredibly liberating place to be, because I was still existing … it wasn’t enjoyable but I could still handle it.”
Without hesitation she wants that individual Olympic gold.
“Don’t get me wrong, I would love an individual Olympic gold medal, it’s the pinnacle of any Olympic athlete’s achievements,” Campbell said.
“It’s the pinnacle of something I’ve dreamt of since I was a little kid, but I’ve made peace with the fact it may not happen. If it doesn’t happen it won’t fundamentally change me as a person. It won’t change my worth as person.
“It’s something I desperately want but I am happy enough without it.”
Originally published as Jessica Halloran: How Rio Games heartbreak changed Cate Campbell
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