Cody Simpson on the biggest challenge of his life
When he first announced he was training for the Olympics, many dismissed Cody Simpson as a bored popstar looking for a hobby. But those doubts are long gone, and as Paris approaches, the 27-year-old is on the cusp of creating one of the greatest stories in Australian sporting history.
“My earliest memories were swimming and playing guitar,” says Cody Simpson, who is on his way back from the pool as we speak. “[Those were] the only things I remember caring about as an eight-year-old, and it still is the same.”
It still is the same. Except, of course, everything is different. Simpson is now famous to millions as the kid who was discovered posting song covers on YouTube, who moved to LA at 13, landed a record deal, toured the world with Justin Bieber, added a patchwork of tattoos and scored a Top 10 album on the Billboard 200. He appeared on Dancing with the Stars US, The Masked Singer Australia, and a musical on Broadway — all before he turned 25.
For some, that might be enough. Most people barely get one shot at a childhood dream, let alone two, but Simpson is not the type to wonder what might have been. Before pop stardom, Simpson was a talented swimmer, competing at a national level. And so five years ago, at the height of his success, he hit pause on music to dive back into the pool. He began training at the University of Southern California’s acclaimed Trojans swim club, with Ian Thorpe as a mentor. His goal was the Olympics. “Because that’s the pinnacle. I had to set myself a serious target if I was going to do what it took,” he says, “especially in half or a third of the time that everyone else has been training.”
The reality was more improbable than that. Australia’s key competitive swimming body, Swimming Australia, has about 90,000 registered members but even at the highest level, many of them might train their whole lives without a chance at making it to the Olympics. And that’s without taking a sabbatical to pursue music superstardom. After all, only 38 swimmers will make it into the Australian Olympic team, also known as The Dolphins. There’s also the fact that by the time Thorpe was Simpson’s age, he was one year into retirement. But none of that deterred him.
“It’s probably one of the most unforgiving sports there is,” says Simpson, of the margin between success and failure. “Things can be won or lost by a 100th of a second, but it’s also an amazing sport because it teaches you a lot of patience.”
Simpson would need it. Although he narrowly missed out on selection for Tokyo, he went on to represent Australia at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, where he won gold as part of the 4 X 100-metre freestyle relay team and silver in the 4 X 100-metre medley relay — enough to keep the doubters at bay.
To help with his preparation this year, Simpson enlisted Paddy Steinfort, a former AFL player turned performance coach, who has worked with Kansas City Chiefs star quarterback Patrick Mahomes during his time at Texas Tech, Australian NBA player Ben Simmons, and the Matildas during their monumental FIFA Women’s World Cup run last year. The training, as you’d expect for an Olympic hopeful, is brutal. Two or three sessions a day, mixing time between the gym and pool, where he can clock up to five kilometres in the water per session. But Steinfort has also been helping Simpson manage the expectations on himself in the lead-up to the biggest moment of his swimming career.
“I am constantly figuring things out as I go. And that’s exciting — but it can also be very daunting, especially when a lot of people are watching and have an expectation around the outcome,” he says. “It can feel like a lot of pressure sometimes, but that’s something that you have to see as somewhat of an illusion.”
Also on Simpson’s side is Omega, the official timekeeper for the Olympic Games since 1932. The Swiss watchmaker signed him as a sport ambassador in 2022 but had been working with him for a number of years already. “It’s cool to now be supported by them as an athlete,” says Simpson of the partnership. “Prior to this, I’ve been able to attend and perform at some events in Switzerland with Omega, and then when I came back to swimming, they were awesome enough to support me as an athlete in my journey. To have them alongside me in all these different areas of my life is really cool.”
For someone who has achieved as much as Simpson, it’s no surprise he sets a high standard for himself. But whereas the milestones for musicians are more subjective and personal, swimming has changed the way he looks at success; things are a lot more cut and dry in the pool. “You can’t argue with a fast time,” I say to him. “Or a slow one,” he replies, quickly.
Two days before our interview, Simpson competed in the Australian Open Championships, where he placed fourth in his main event, the men’s 100-metre butterfly final, just over a second slower than winner Matt Temple. Needless to say, it wasn’t the result he wanted — he’ll need to lose that second before the Australian trials in Brisbane from June 10-15. But Simpson is undaunted; his main takeaway is that there is still work left to do. “I’m feeling good,” he says, ever the optimist, “I’m still in my prep for the June trials, and I’m trying to trust the process, and the work that I’m doing.”
Simpson is well aware of the work required to make it to the top. The endurance is not simply physical. For the most part, swimming is a solitary pursuit consisting of countless hours of training spent more or less alone, with little company beyond the black line at the bottom of the pool. It’s an almost mechanical routine that has been known to break even the toughest competitors. Such zealous pursuit of a singular goal can lead to an inability to know, let alone enjoy, the success that follows.
Australian swimming great Kieran Perkins has spoken candidly about his depression after the 1992 Olympics, where he broke the 1500-metre world record and secured the Australian swimming team’s only gold medal. “You have to understand, I spend six hours a day with my head in a bucket of water, looking at a black line,” he said at the time.
Perkins is hardly the only competitive swimmer to struggle with the pressures of the pool; some of them have ended up making headlines outside of the sports pages. When Simpson started training seriously, one of the first things his mentor Thorpe told him was not to give up on music, to ensure he had something else in his life. It’s advice Simpson has taken to heart, using music to find mental clarity and avoid burnout from the rigours of training.
“[Swimming has] certainly become the all- encompassing focus of my life at the moment, and has gradually become more and more so every year. [But] I really am glad I have music, too. It’s played a real cathartic role in my life in the past few years.” “Having a creative background has helped me approach swimming in an interesting way,” says the athlete, who is also writing The Sea and Me, a children’s book inspired by the sense of calm the sport has brought him. “I find myself coming up with ideas all the time in those moments, because your mindset has the space to wander. And I love that about swimming. It’s very solitary. It’s intense, but when you’re doing a recovery swim or something a bit easier, it’s a bit like meditating. My mental state is the best and healthiest it’s ever been.”
Simpson has another significant personal connection to the pool. In 2022, he began dating fellow swimmer Emma McKeon, whose 11-medal haul across the 2016 Rio de Janeiro and 2020 Tokyo Games makes her the most decorated Australian in Olympics history.
“I certainly learn a lot from how she handles ups and downs and successes and failures,” he says of McKeon, a fellow Omega sports ambassador who recently announced Paris would be her last Olympics. “We both obviously have a lot of emotional baggage around each of our performances and careers and we try not to put those on each other while also still being able to be that supportive figure. But there’s not a lot of talk of swimming at home.”
For Simpson, the moment of truth is fast approaching. This month’s 2024 Australian Swimming Trials will determine if he wins a spot among the 38 Dolphins. When he steps up on the blocks in Brisbane it will be all or nothing: the point when he finds out the result of the past four years of laser focus, dedication and gruelling training. Only a fast time will ensure he heads to Paris, in what is tipped to be our strongest team in Olympics history. Has he thought about what might happen if he doesn’t get there? A return to music? Another book? More swimming? “I’ve intentionally put a brick wall on the other side of this season, so that I didn’t think about it too much. I don’t know yet,” Simpson says of what may be.
“It’s actually one of the very first times in my life, or at least in about 15 years, that I haven’t known what I’m going to be doing. And I’m embracing that uncertainty and freedom.”
Whatever the result, there can be no doubt that he has already rewritten the rules of what’s achievable with determination and talent.
His path into the pool might not be conventional, but in many ways his story is the stuff sporting legends have always been made of: a kid who took his childhood dreams and was willing to do whatever was needed to make them come true. After all, he’s already done it once before.
“Whether or not I get that fairytale ending is undetermined,” he says of the future. “And either way, I think I’ve been able to show a lot of people what’s possible if you have a good crack.”
Will Lennox is a content producer at GQ Australia
A version of this story will appear in the June/July 2024 issue of GQ Australia, available exclusively inside The Australian on June 14, with the title “Cody Simpson’s big dream”
Production credits:
Photography: Charles Dennington
Styling: Kaila Matthews
Hair: Georgia Ramman
Skin: Isabella Schimid
Production: Charlotte Rose
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