Cate Campbell’s human response to success and failure is helping bringing fans back to swimming

CATE Campbell has been so raw and genuine on her road back to world record highs that she has started to reconnect many Aussie swimming fans who had fallen out of love with our sport.

CATE Campbell has been so raw and genuine on her road back to world record highs that she has started to reconnect many Aussie swimming fans who had fallen out of love with our sport.

Like so many Australians, I was heartbroken with the way she beat herself up publicly after not swimming to her great potential when hot favourite in the 100m freestyle at the Rio Olympics. I also understood the depth of her disappointment after working her whole life for a dream and not achieving it.

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Cate Campbell’s pure joy after the women’s relay team broke the world record on Thursday night.

Her really open slant on that disappointment was right from the soul and many fans hurt along with her. Someone smarter than me said the test is not what knocks you down but how you get up from it.

She swam beautifully, just as sister Bronte did, in her leg of the 4x100m freestyle relay world record at the Commonwealth Games on Thursday night.

Cate is a really interesting case because I do feel some who had grown disaffected with swimming are back on board because of her.

I say “some” because I don’t think the sport, Swimming Australia as a body, has done a good enough job to build the public’s affection for individual swimmers over the past 10 years.

Gold medalists Bronte Campbell and Cate Campbell after their world record performance on the Gold Coast.

Aussies get engrossed in a story and a struggle and Cate stepping away for a break and rebuilding her destiny over the past 20 months has been hugely impressive.

I’ve felt her reflections have been really honest and ­philosophical.

The connection she is building strongly with fans extends further to the maturity she is showing to step into that void of leadership and stir more widespread commentary for swimming.

The public connect with ­individual swimmers and their stories and it should not just be this week that Australians are starting to find out more about Ariarne Titmus, Mitch Larkin, Mack Horton, Jack McLoughlin and co.

Different scenes after their sixth and fourth place in Rio. Picture. Brett Costello

When people name swimmers they still talk about Thorpey, Grant Hackett, Susie O’Neill and old farts like me holding the nation’s attention.

I also understand that swimming didn’t help itself at times either when certain swimmers got carried away with their own profiles, got too arrogant and behaved badly.

I know that old swimming writers wrote positive things about me and also a good number of negative slants that I deserved.

There should be no stopping Cate now. . Pics Adam Head

That balance of conversation created humanity to a swimmer not a manufactured version.

Cate is rebuilding herself just as Michael Klim did after heading to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as a favourite for gold (200m freestyle) and not reaching the final.

He came back to set world records and play a lead role in the “smashing-of-guitars” relay gold medal at the 2000 Olympics.

Cate can really make a mark for herself and for Australian swimming on the Gold Coast on the road to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Originally published as Cate Campbell’s human response to success and failure is helping bringing fans back to swimming