James Magnussen: Why Swimming Australia must take Maddie Groves’ bombshell complaints seriously

Maddie Groves’ explosive accusations cannot be ignored. In his exclusive column, James Magnussen lifts the lid on life behind the scenes as a swimmer.

Former Australian star James Magnussen says Swimming Australia must treat Maddie Groves’ allegations extremely seriously.

Swimming Australia needs to treat Maddie Groves’ claims about the problems she experienced in the sport with the utmost sensitivity.

If what she’s saying is true, then it is a problem that needs to be investigated further because there’s some serious words and accusations in that tweet which are just too important to ignore and brush away.

The most important thing right now is that Maddie is getting the support that she needs but it’s also important that we don’t take all the focus off the swimmers swimming this week because it’s their opportunity to show the world what they’ve got.

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For a lot of people, the pressure at the Australian trials is bigger than the Olympic Games because just making the team is to fulfil a lifelong dream.

There’s a lot of stress and there’s a lot of emotion at this time of the year, so it wouldn’t have been easy for Maddie to pull out.

Let this be a lesson to all misogynistic perverts in sport and their boot lickers - You can no longer exploit young women and girls, body shame or medically gaslight them and then expect them to represent you so you can earn your annual bonus. Time’s UP https://t.co/XMQCRPjNzK

— Maddie Groves (@MaddieGroves_) June 9, 2021

She’s a really intelligent girl and I’m sure she consulted with the right people before she made that decision and I hope we see her in the pool again, because it’ll be a big loss for Australian swimming if we don’t see her back on that Australian swim team.

Anyone who thinks Maddie only made her complaints about the way she was treated because she wasn’t going to make the team is missing the point.

Maddie has swum super fast on minimal training in the past, so there’s nothing to say that if she had come down here and jumped up on those blocks, that she wouldn’t have got on the team, so we can’t discount that.

A lot of people just don’t understand the pressure that swimmers are under, which sometimes comes back years later.

Ariarne Titmus, Emma McKeon, Mikkayla Sheridan and Madeline Groves

It’s a really tough environment because you’re always trying to focus on your own performance and your own preparation, so you’re always trying to block out those external distractions.

Often when there are issues going on, it can be in the best interest of your personal preparations to block out what’s going on around you and maybe that’s something that Maddie did at the time, but is now seeing this in hindsight as an issue that needs to be raised.

If that is the case, I hope that proper measures are taken to find out the roots of this issue and to get some closure for both Maddie and for the Australian swimming team because they’re too serious to ignore.