Paris Olympics 2024: Matty Johns and James Magnussen discuss Aussie men’s swimming

Australian men’s swimming has a talent problem. Dual Olympian James Magnussen asks how the recruiters from the AFL and NRL can be stopped on the latest episode of the Matty + The Missile podcast.

Olympic medallist James Magnussen has voiced his concern with the loss of young talent in Australian men’s swimming.

The Aussie women claimed six gold medals between them at the Paris Games, while the men managed just the one.

Speaking on the 10th episode of Matty + The Missile, Magnussen said more needs to be done.

“We need to work on our male swimmers. We’re losing a lot talent in age group swimming to professional sports like AFL and NRL,” he said.

“Let’s say you get a 16 year old Simon Chalmers. A 6 foot 5 kid, about 90 kilos, athletically built…how do we entice him to come across to swimming, what opportunities can be offer him? Because at the moment the AFL can throw $200k at him.”

Cameron McEvoy was the only male swimmer to take home gold from Paris. Picture: Getty Images

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Another avenue to improve is coaching and Magnussen touched on a big coup for the Aussies.

“They’ve just signed Adam Peaty’s breastroke coach from Great Britain to come across to Australia and coach at the Gold Coast high performance centre.

“Because we’ve identified that Australia is struggling in breaststroke. We saw that big time tonight in our individual medley.”

Listen to Matty & the Missile in Paris here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Originally published as Paris Olympics 2024: Matty Johns and James Magnussen discuss Aussie men’s swimming