Cate and Bronte Campbell miss out on medals in 100m freestyle final at Rio Olympics
CATE Campbell might’ve been the world record holder going in the 100m freestyle final, but there’s something she admits she should never have done in the lead up.
CATE Campbell admits she was guilty of thinking about the Olympic gold medal. Now she has four more years to dwell on it.
Australia’s Olympic swimming campaign has succumbed to the pressure with repeated failures by world No.1 ranked athletes to produce their best on the big stage leading to a series of shocks and disappointments.
First it was world champions Mitch Larkin and Emily Seebohm in the 100m backstroke. Then it was Cameron McEvoy in the 100m freestyle. And next was the biggest shock of all, 100m freestyle world record holder Cate Campbell.
The towering sprinter who seemed immune to pressure crumbled under the weight of expectation and the bright lights of an Olympics.
Campbell mentally disintegrated before she even reached the blocks and duly produced one of the slowest finals swims (53.24s) of her recent career in the final to finish a disappointing seventh.
Campbell admitted it was all her fault, that she allowed her mind to think of medals and not processes and her daydreaming became a nightmare. She was probably never going to make it to Tokyo Olympics in 2020, but now she just might push on to her fourth Games at the age of 28.
“I did flinch before the start but there’s no excuses, this is an Olympic final, I should have stepped up and performed better but that’s the way the chips fell,” Campbell said.
“I think I just spent too much emotional energy in the lead up and even in that race I let my head get ahead of me and that’s not something that I should do, and it’s something that I’ve been working on hard to not do, but maybe I’ve still got another four years left in me.
“It’s always hard when you’re in form coming into an event, it’s hard not to think about outcomes and I let my imagination run away with me a little bit.
“Tonight showed it was anyone’s game and it wasn’t mine tonight.”
Her coach Simon Cusack and Dolphins head coach Jacco Verhaeren were stunned. Verhaeren had started the day suggesting McEvoy suffered from “stage fright” only to witness an encore performance by his other star sprinter. He denied the problem was endemic of the entire team but evidence is mounting they can’t handle pressure of favouritism.
“I’m stunned,” he said.
“It’s the Olympics and you can never count a medal before it’s done but on this level I’m stunned about the gap between her personal best time and what she does here.
“There is nothing in the preparation that I’ve seen that I would’ve done differently either. I think we have all things in place to support these athletes and not only physically and technically but also mentally.
“This is the most difficult part of high performance, we had the two fastest swimmers in the world so technically and physically they are more than ready to do whatever and they showed that in relays and heats and semi-finals but at the Olympics it’s about swimming finals and that’s an art in itself.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a pattern but it is something we’ve seen too often here at the Olympics.”
Compounding Cate’s result was the fourth place to reigning world champion Bronte Campbell in a time of 53.04s.
But there should be no disappointment there, as a series of injuries left her marginally short of her peak performance and just 0.05s off a historic podium that featured 16-year-old Canadian Penny Oleksiak (52.70s) and USA’s first African-American gold medallist in Simone Manuel sharing the gold.
“That was exciting, obviously you want to change results but to be honest I wouldn’t change anything about that race,” Bronte said.
“We were all out there and all going for gold and that’s the most exciting thing, it’s not about winning at the Olympic Games it’s about trying to win.
“The motto is faster, higher, stronger, not fastest, highest, strongest, so sometimes it’s the trying that matters so everyone that got out there and pursued their dreams is a little bit of a victor tonight.
“I’m not unhappy with my race. That was one of my fastest times and in an Olympic final so I can’t be too upset with that.”
Originally published as Cate and Bronte Campbell miss out on medals in 100m freestyle final at Rio Olympics
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