Kyle Chalmers going to war with the media could drive Swimming Australia success at Paris Olympics

Team controversies have often been the catalyst for Australian swimming choke jobs and the circus surrounding Kyle Chalmers will be ratcheted to the max at the Paris Olympics.

Kyle Chalmers did not hold back in delivering his throughts on the media

Kyle Chalmers’ latest fallout with the media which he claims has it in for him, won’t just be the making or breaking of him.

It’ll also have a huge bearing on whether the Dolphins can repeat their stunning success from last year’s Tokyo Olympics when they get to Paris in two years’ time.

Right now, the Big Tuna’s spat with the fourth estate is primarily about him, but it will inevitably spill over to the rest of the entire Australian team because he’s one of the biggest personalities in the sport and flashpoint moments involving leaders either unite or divide squads.

There’s always been dramas and rifts within Australian swimming but it’s how the team responds to adversity that decides the fortunes of the country’s highest-funded Olympic sport.

Criticised in the past for being pampered poodles who cave in at the first sign of pressure, the early signs suggest this latest soap opera is having a galvanising effect on the team - bringing them even closer together.

When Chalmers reappeared at the Commonwealth Games on Sunday morning, he put his game face on and the response from the rest of the team was the same as they blew the opposition apart to win gold medals in both the men’s and women’s relays.

The big bear hugs he shared with his team mates on the pool deck - and the overwhelming support from other team members, including Emma McKeon and Cody Simpson - was proof they have his back.

Kyle Chalmers says the media attentionon him may cause him to quit the sport.

THIS IS A PIVOTAL MOMENT

These swimmers may not fully understand it right now, but this is a great test of their resolve because the pressure they’re feeling in Birmingham is nothing to what they’ll be under in Paris in 2024 and nothing swings the pendulum more than when the chips are down.

In London in 2012 and again in Rio in 2016, things quickly unravelled at the first sign of trouble.

But in Tokyo last year, in the midst of a global pandemic where the Dolphins had every excuse in the world to underperform, they toughed it out and reaped the rewards - winning a record nine Olympic gold medals.

Insiders will tell you that one of the key reasons the Aussies were so much thicker-skinned in Japan than at previous Olympics was because they’d been put to the acid test two years earlier, at the world championships in South Korea.

That was when Mack Horton went against all the advice that any PR agency would have told him by protesting against the inclusion of China’s Sun Yang while he was under investigation for smashing his doping samples before they could be tested for drugs.

Horton became public enemy No. 1 in China for his brave stand - which history now shows was the right thing to do - but just as importantly, he had the support of his team mates, publicly and privately.

A week later when it was revealed that Shayna Jack had been sent home over a positive test, Swimming Australia was made to look like hypocrites.

That could easily have killed the team’s vibe, but it strengthened it and the same thing is happening now in Birmingham.

This Dolphins team has been on the road now for months - attending the world titles in Budapest and now the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.

So, it’s only natural that there’s some tension but this team is far too good to be knocked off course by one prominent member believing the fourth estate has it in for him, particularly when it’s not accurate.

Kyle Chalmers has struggled with his mental health in recent months

CHALMERS LOVES THE ATTENTION

The truth is Chalmers is a media favourite because this is a sport crying out for larger than life character and that’s what he is.

An alpha dog who leads from the front and isn’t afraid to speak his mind, Chalmers gets more media coverage than anyone else in the team.

He proudly posts articles about him on his Instagram account but lashes out whenever there’s anything which he perceives as negative.

In his latest posting, he said: “I have dedicated my life to this sport and representing my country. I am your poster boy from 2016 and I’m your villain in 2022.”

Chalmers’ love-hate relationship with the media has been bubbling away since the Australian trials in Adelaide earlier this year when Simpson took the limelight from him when he made his first team.

But that was no sleight on Chalmers. That was plan and simply a once-in-a-lifetime feelgood story that everyone else in swimming - and the world of pop music - warmed to.

The sport of swimming is littered with too many stories of kids who burnt out from all the training before they finished high school so to have a pop star make it to the highest level after 10 years out of the water is the sort of publicity any sport would kill for.

Plenty was written about Chalmers’ demeanour after he wont gold with Emma McKeon

Rightly or wrongly, Chalmers’ decision to suddenly take up butterfly at the senior level - the same stroke as Simpson - added fuel to the speculation he wasn’t pleased at the attention the new upstart was getting.

He also copped some flak for not immediately congratulating McKeon, at least publicly, after they teamed up to win gold in the mixed freestyle relay at the Birmingham Aquatic Centre.

Both he and McKeon have refuted those claims, saying he did acknowledge her part in the victory but just not on the pool deck when the lenses of every camera in the arena were trained on lane four waiting to snap the moment.

MOST ALARMING MOMENT

That was a public relations 101 moment that was missed. But it’s the response that’s been most worrying.

Now Chalmers is threatening to walk away from swimming, saying: “I swim to inspire and I swim because I love my sport and it gives me purpose. This could end my time in swimming. I hope you are all aware. My mental health right now from all of this over the months is at rock bottom, I really hope that pleases the keyboard warriors that continue to write false news.”

No-one, least of all the media, wants King Kyle gone because he still has a lot to offer the sport, both as a competitor and a team leader, but what happens next to him and his team mates, will be his call, not the media’s.

Originally published as Kyle Chalmers going to war with the media could drive Swimming Australia success at Paris Olympics