Tokyo 2021 comment: Cate Campbell won bronze in the 100m freestyle, but she has a spirit worth more than gold medals

Hateful trolls nearly forced Cate Campbell out of swimming, but the new 100m Olympic freestyle bronze medallist would not allow her spirit to be broken.

Cate Campbell with her Olympic 100m freestyle gold medal. Picture: Getty Images

Cate Campbell received so many hateful messages and criticism in the first few days after she bombed out at the 2016 Rio Olympics that she mistakenly thought she had let the whole of Australia down.

She hadn’t, but the vicious online trolls had tricked her into believing she owed everyone an apology, so she went on national television to say sorry for what she described as the greatest choke in Olympic history.

She was wrong about that too, it wasn’t anything of the sort.

But it was only in the weeks and months and years that followed that Campbell began to understand how many Australians shared her heartbreak that night on the Rio pool deck.

She received a sackful of letters from people of all ages, from all over the country, telling her how much they admired her.

Cate Campbell celebrates an Aussie triumph with compatriot Emma McKeon. Picture: Getty Images

When she went to shops, strangers would approach her and encourage her to keep swimming when she was thinking about quitting.

She felt the love and vowed to repay everyone who not only supported her but also changed her outlook on life and swimming.

“I am a person first and a swimmer second,” she said.

“Sometimes that gets lost.”

Australia is bursting with pride at what Australia’s swimmers are doing in Tokyo right now and a lot of that is because of Campbell, the soul of the team. If Campbell never wins the individual Olympic gold medal that has eluded her during her career, it doesn’t matter because she’s achieved something greater.

Of all the medals she has won on the international stage, few are as precious as the bronze she collected in the 100m freestyle final, won by Emma McKeon.

It wasn’t colour that mattered.

Cate Campbell with her Olympic 100m freestyle gold medal. Picture: Getty Images

It was what it represented: the Aussie spirit of never giving up, no matter how bad things look.

Now 29, it’s unknown whether Campbell will keep swimming after Tokyo, but if this is her last Olympics she can rest assured she never let Australia down.

And she certainly never owed anyone an apology.

Cate banishes demons of Rio

—Jacquelin Magnay

The moment that Cate Campbell had been waiting and dreaming about for the past five years happened so quickly, it caught her completely by surprise.

She knew as soon as she touched the wall after her 100m freestyle final at the Tokyo Olympics that she had swum well.

She had raced her heart out.

She had executed everything she wanted, and best of all, she hadn’t had a repeat of her self-described “choke” in the final at Rio in 2016.

But in a sport where success is invariably judged by the colour of the medals that swimmers receive, there was still a nagging doubt in her head about whether she had truly banished the demons from Rio.

Cate Campbell holds Emma McKeon’s arm aloft post-race.

So she took a deep breath, huddled into the blocks, head bowed, before slowly turning around to look at the scoreboard at the other end of the pool to see where she finished.

The look of relief, then jubilation, on her face said it all.

It was real. She had placed third and won the bronze medal. She could not have been happier had she touched first and got the gold.

“This is my fourth Olympics, but this is only my second individual medal,” she said. “It honestly means the world to me. It’s been a really long journey to get here. And I’m incredibly proud of that performance.”

She was quick to congratulate McKeon in the lane next to her.

“I’m so happy for Emma,” she said during interviews.

“Seeing her get up, and I’m so glad that there’s going to be an Australian national anthem echoing through this stadium.

“And I’m so glad that I get to be on the podium and share that moment with her.

“She is one of the toughest competitors and trainers I have encountered. She deserves everything that has come her way.”

An emotional Cate Campbell receives her bronze medal.

When Campbell touched the wall in third, at that same moment, all the lingering doubts and anxieties and the what ifs that have burdened her for the past five years just vanished, forever.

As hard as she had tried to convince herself and everyone else, Campbell had never quite gotten over what happened in Rio.

She went into the Games as the red-hot favourite and clearly fastest on paper, but didn’t win a medal in either of her two individual events.

And then she played out her disappointment in a series of interviews, even at one point offering an apology to Australia for letting everyone down.

But she left Rio and after some soul searching, set about putting together plan to land on the dais in Tokyo.

She provided a rare and deeply personal insight into all the tricks and methods she uses to stop herself from thinking about Rio each time she steps back on the blocks. But she knows the fears are real and always trying to find a way back into her mind, especially during major meets.

“It takes a lot of discipline to keep those nagging doubts at bay,” she said, matter-of-factly.

“Where you are in a position where you have had a bad experience and you wilfully put yourself in that position again.

“Understandably your body is saying ‘what are you doing to me?’

“I guess I have done a lot of work in the past five years.

“A lot of processing.”

Emma McKeon and Cate Campbell revel in each others’ success.

A hug between champions.

She said: “There were understandably quite a few demons knocking on my door this morning, but I held them all at bay.

“I performed when it counted and I get to stand on an Olympic podium.”

One of the tricks she uses to remain calm is listening to her favourite music on her headphones.

Her playlist includes Lady Powers by Vera Blue, a Slumberjack Remix, as well as rap and heavy metal but for Tokyo she added a tune from another Aussie icon, Helen Reddy.

“In terms of how I kept the demons at bay, I have had ‘I Am Woman’ on repeat in my head,” she said. “The lyrics are perfect coming into this meet.”

At 29 and already competing at her fourth Olympics, no-one knows, including Campbell herself, whether she will stick around for the next edition in Paris in 2024.

Despite the 12-month delay and the obvious problems with organising an Olympics in the middle of a global pandemic, Tokyo has already been close to perfect for Campbell.

She was chosen to carry the Australian flag at the opening ceremony, the first female to do so.

Although many before her opted not to take up the offer because it is too close to their events, Cate knew how much it would mean.

And then in the week since then, she has won a third straight Olympic gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay and now a second individual bronze to go with the one she won in the 50m freestyle at Beijing in 2008 and she has the 50m freestyle and medley relays to come.