Olympian Kyle Chalmers reveals the AFL club that tried to sign him

Olympic swimming great and former footy player Kyle Chalmers has made an eye-popping reveal over an approach from an AFL club.

Kyle Chalmers is one of Australia’s biggest stars of the pool, but his first love had nothing to do with Speedos and swimming caps.

Chalmers’ dad is former Crows and Port Adelaide footy player Brett Chalmers and Kyle’s dream as a kid was to follow in his footsteps.

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The three-time Olympian has now opened up on just how close he came to hanging up the togs and trying to make a career on the footy field.

A junior footy player growing up in South Australia, Chalmers finally gave up on his first dream for good in 2021.

“That was my dream for sure,” the 26-year-old told The Howie Games podcast.

“Not anymore — up until 2021, that was definitely my dream, was to then one day play AFL footy.

Kyle Chalmers (left) added two silvers to his collection at Paris 2024. Photo: Adam Head

“As a kid, (I) obviously wanted to follow in my dad’s footsteps of playing AFL. He played for both Adelaide teams.”

Chalmers burst into the spotlight with a gold medal in the 100m freestyle at the Rio Olympics in 2016 when he was still a teenager.

He also won two relay bronze medals in Brazil and has since added three silvers and three more bronze medals to his bulging collection.

Initially leaning towards retirement after this year’s Paris Games, Chalmers now intends to continue swimming and hasn’t ruled out a tilt at a fourth Olympics in Los Angeles.

But a switch to pulling on the boots and having a shot at the AFL suddenly become more realistic in 2020 when he was battling a shoulder injury.

Chalmers won gold at his first Olympics in Brazil. AFP PHOTO/CHRISTOPHE SIMON

He also played B-Grade footy for Lincoln South against Marble Range last year. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Robert Lang

That’s when the Geelong footy club reached out to the 194cm, 93kg athlete.

“A mate of mine, (musician) Scotty Darlow, spoke to me and he said ‘Troy Selwood actually wants to talk to you about going to Geelong’,” Chalmers recalls.

“And I was like ‘this has to be a joke’.

“But I’ll sit down and do like, whatever, I’ll do the Zoom call with Troy Selwood.

“And I got on Zoom and did this two-hour recruitment thing about going to Geelong as a Category B rookie.

“If I was going to do that it had to be after the Olympics in 2021, otherwise I would be too old.”

Chalmers turned 23 a month before those delayed Games in Tokyo and was considering following in the footsteps of former steeplechaser Mark Blicavs, who gave up athletics to commence a sensational career with the Cats back in 2012.

And Chalmers was genuinely excited about having another option if his troublesome shoulder forced the end of his time in the pool.

Geelong won the 2022 AFL premiership. Photo: Michael Klein

“I got very excited about it because I didn’t know how my shoulder was going to recover firstly from surgery,” he said.

“So I was like ‘at least I’ve got something I can go to’ and that’s always been my dream.”

He immediately grabbed a Sherrin and went to have a kick with Sam “Sauce” Jacobs, another good mate who played 208 games with Carlton, Adelaide and GWS.

After hearing of the Geelong approach, Jacobs had a message that made up Chalmers’ mind about his AFL dreams.

“I remember pretty much getting off that Zoom call and going to have a kick of footy with my great mate Sam Jacobs,” he said.

“And Sauce really put it at me and said ‘well, do you really want to go from being No. 1 or No. 2 in the world in your sport to being 45th on an AFL list and probably never playing a game?’.

Mark Blicavs made a successful change from athletics to footy. (Photo by Darrian Traynor/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

Kyle Chalmers and fiancee Ingie Loyning at the Port Adelaide Best and Fairest awards. Picture: Brenton Edwards

“I went ‘yeah that’s actually a very good point, you’re right’, so that was kind of when the dream, the bubble, just burst.

“I went you know what, I actually really love swimming, I love being one of the best swimmers in the world, I love my lifestyle, I love the opportunities it’s given me travelling around the world, so stuff the footy.”

Chalmers, who played some B-Grade footy with Lincoln South in South Australia just last year, had also been around enough talented players to know he likely wouldn’t have made it at the top level.

“I know that I would never be good enough to play footy,” he conceded.

Chalmers’ swimming career isn’t over yet. (Photo by Manan VATSYAYANA / AFP)

“I had so many guys who were amazing footy players through my junior footy teams that never made it to the AFL and they committed their life to it.

“How am I going to go from swimming on the Australian team for the last seven or eight teams to then playing footy?”

Still, it remains a great mystery of Australian sport, just how far Chalmers could have made it if he had dedicated himself to the footy field.

Football’s loss has certainly been swimming’s gain, although his good mate Darlow, who is a Geelong fan, still likes to dream of what could have been.

“We nearly had him Geelong Cats,” Darlow wrote in a post on Instagram.

”Would have been (Mark Blicavs) all over again. Instead he went on to win world championships and @ausolympicteam medals!”

Originally published as Olympian Kyle Chalmers reveals the AFL club that tried to sign him