Cate Campbell almost certain to swim on if Games cancelled

Swimming Australia boss investigating alternate meet should the Tokyo Olympics be abandoned.

Cate Campbell is concentrating on competing at the Tokyo Olympics despite the cloud hanging over the Games Picture. Phil Hillyard

Even though she is thinking of little else this year but the Tokyo Games going ahead in July, Australian swimming team spearhead Cate Campbell has said she almost certainly would extend her career an extra three years to the 2024 Paris Olympics if the Japanese event is abandoned.

As things stand, the postponed Olympics are going ahead this year but Swimming Australia president Kieren Perkins revealed to The Weekend Australia that his organisation had begun investigating what kind of alternate event could be staged for the Dolphins team if the Games are called off.

Campbell, 28, who is aiming to lead Australia to a third consecutive gold in the 4x100m freestyle relay in Tokyo, has not deviated from her Plan A for the Tokyo Games – the Olympics are going ahead, come what may.

She was relieved and reassured by the Australian Olympic Committee’s firm commitment to backing the Games, with chief executive Matt Carroll giving a press conference in Sydney on Friday at which the AOC supported assurances by the International Olympic Committee and the Japanese government that the Games would proceed despite the current COVID state of emergency in Tokyo.

“You have to work with the information that you have at hand,” Campbell told The Weekend Australian. “Ultimately my job is to swim and I cannot control what goes on behind the scenes and I have to trust that there is a team of people who are a lot smarter than I am and who probably have even more at stake than I do, that want to make sure that these Games go ahead. That is the premise I am working off.

“And until I hear definitively, differently, it’s full steam ahead.”

But she is realistic enough to know that by the time the Games reach the “go, no go” point in March, the whole fluid situation with the global pandemic might have taken a turn for the worse. In that event, she would have to decide whether she has the willpower and the energy to keep stoking her Olympic fire through to Paris in 2024.

“I think that if the past year has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t trust my plans any more,” Campbell said. “I would like to think that I would want to go on. It would just be unfinished business in the extreme if I didn’t make that fourth Olympics. It’s a milestone that only one other Australian swimmer (breaststroker Leisel Jones) has achieved. I feel like I am still capable of it at the moment…..whether that’s true down the track….

“It is only three years and for some reason three years is a lot different to four years. And I don’t know why that is. It just means that I can take a year off and then takes two years to come back. The planning for a three-year preparation looks very different to a four-year one.”

Perkins said on Friday that while his organisation was delighted with the AOC announcement, it had begun to explore the possibility of staging a real or virtual “replacement Olympics” if that became necessary.

“We have started discussions and this is where the conversation is after today’s little moment of panic … our athletes will be ready,” Perkins said. “We are preparing on the basis that this is happening so our swimmers will be ready, our trials are going ahead. If the Games themselves are cancelled, what can we do to take advantage of the fact that our athletes are ready?

“It is open question…. whether we run our own meet or maybe we could do a virtual meet with some of our major competition. It is an open question mark at the moment but we will prepare and have alternate plans.

“If the worst happens and Tokyo is cancelled, for our athletes who have had the opportunity to prepare and work so hard for so long to get to this moment, I think it behoves us to give them the best chance to at least test themselves and see what that work has created.

It’s an idea that has a precedent. When the USA boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Americans staged their outdoor nationals on August 2, the day before the Olympic closing ceremony. Madame Butterfly Mary T Meagher, for instance, won the 100m butterfly in 59.41sec, a full second ahead of the East German gold medallist. Still, it provided grim satisfaction to Meagher and all the other American winners.

“I think one of the benefits of having an ex-athlete as our current president is that he thinks of things like that,” said Campbell. “So it is a wonderful idea. Will it be the same? Absolutely not. But it is something worth exploring and asking athletes if it is something they would like to do, absolutely. And it is great to see that Swimming Australia is already thinking on … I won’t say worse case contingency plans…. I’m going to say it’s lower than worst case contingency plans.”