Tokyo Olympics 2021: How swim coach Rohan Taylor forged our greatest ever team

It was a training camp like no other – an intense test that took our star swimmers well out of their comfort zones. And it helped forge our greatest ever Olympic swimming team.

At the start of 2021, four months before the team for Tokyo had even been selected, Australia’s newly appointed national head coach got the country’s best swimmers together for a training camp like no other.

The pandemic had already derailed the team’s long term plans but Rohan Taylor knew there were more disruptions awaiting in Tokyo and he needed his swimmers to be ready for anything.

So he devised a series of tests and challenges, which he announced without warning, to get the swimmers out of their comfort zones, including splitting the squad into teams and ordering them to swim races they didn’t expect to be in as though their lives depended on it.

“I wanted to basically throw them off. I wanted to see how they responded and that they are capable of responding,” he said.

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Head coach Rohan Taylor with Dean Boxall at the Tobruk Pool in Cairns during a July training camp. Picture: Delly Carr

“It comes down to competitive IQ. We have got to have athletes who want to win, know how to win and who are determined to push through that pressure to win and I think that’s what we have.”

It’s no secret that Australia’s swimmers have sometimes wilted under the intense pressure of the Olympics but they passed the test in Tokyo with flying colours, winning 20 medals, including nine gold.

The total medal count matches the Australian record from the 2008 Beijing Olympics but the nine golds is a new record, surpassing the eight won at Melbourne in 1956, when there were fewer countries competing.

“It’s amazing, unbelievable, everything we were hoping for,” Taylor said.

“We had some things that didn’t go our way, but we had more go our way than not.

“I’m so proud to be a part of the team. Going through Covid was a challenging time for everyone in the world and for these athletes to come together, we really played on that as a resilience thing.”

Zac Stubblety-Cook was the only man to win gold after his surprise victory in 200m breaststroke as eight of the nine gold medals were won by women, including three who achieved rare individual doubles.

Kyle Chalmers, Emma McKeon, Ariarne Titmus, Kaylee McKeown and Zac Stubblety-Cook all took home medals from Tokyo.

Emma McKeon won the 50m and 100m freestyle sprints, Ariarne Titmus cleaned up the middle distances events, winning gold in the 200m freestyle and 400m freestyle, while Kaylee McKeown won the 100m and 200m backstroke finals.

Australia’s women also won the 4x100m freestyle on the first morning of finals and bookended it by also winning the 4x100m medley relays, on the last day, with Cate Campbell anchoring Australia to one of the the most heartstopping races ever witnessed in the pool, that could not have been better scripted.

“I am so proud to be a member of this team,” Campbell said.

“It’s still sinking in. I cannot believe we went out and did that.”