Olympian Lani Pallister on Paris disappointment, her health battles and new co-coach Mel Marshall
Lani Pallister may have had her Olympic aspirations derailed by Covid, but a fresh training program under a new “powerhouse” co-coach has the 22-year-old excited for what is to come.
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Olympic swimmer Lani Pallister has had her fair share of dark moments in the sport.
But the 22-year-old isn’t afraid of the “scary work” to come this season under new co-coach Mel Marshall and mum Janelle Pallister as she strives to put a disappointing individual Paris Olympic campaign behind her and reset towards the 2028 Olympics.
A sixth-straight Pier to Pub title in Lorne on Saturday – putting her level with the iconic 1.2km ocean swim’s most successful women’s winners, Ironwoman Harriet Brown and Naantali Marshall – is step one in setting up a successful 2025 season after a series of “highs and lows” across the past three years.
But despite all Pallister has endured, from her 2021 health battles to contracting Covid-19 in Paris, what’s most promising is the fact the competitive drive to reach the top remains as strong as ever.
“I know I stand up against some of the girls internationally and all I want to do is beat them,” Pallister said.
“I still have the will to want to do that and will to get back into training and work hard and put myself in a dark place and really kind of hurt myself to get the best out of myself so I’m excited to move forward and get into some scary work with Janelle and Mel and see what happens this season.”
Pallister’s maiden Olympic Games was ultimately tinged with disappointment.
Pulling out of the 400m event on day one to focus on the 1500m, Pallister had to abandon those aspirations after contracting COVID-19.
A sixth-placed finish in the 800m freestyle final was another underwhelming result for the long-distance specialist.
“It’s pretty hard to work four years of your life to swim an individual event and have it taken away from you from something you can’t control,” Pallister said.
“In the grand scheme of things, I lost two individual events, I raced a relay and the only individual event I ended up swimming out of the three I qualified for was pretty shit.”
On reflection, the 22-year-old knows she should be proud of how far she had come to make it to Paris.
Three years earlier, at 19, she missed selection for the Tokyo Games, later revealing she had undergone heart surgery after being diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia.
This, Pallister said, had snowballed into an eating disorder with the belief being lighter would make her swim faster.
“I think if you look at 2021 me, she would have been stoked I made the (Paris) Olympics and you almost lose sight of that at the moment,” she said.
“Obviously I’m really proud I bounced back from the health conditions I had in 2021 when I missed Tokyo, to make Paris.
“But I think as athletes you constantly strive for more and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed individually.”
It was in putting Australia first and later securing Olympic gold with the women’s 4x200m relay team which ultimately gave Pallister a moment she’ll remember forever, even if there was another case of what-could-have-been as the team fell painstakingly short of a world record.
“We hadn’t won that since 2008 when they had eight girls switch out completely,” Pallister said.
“The six of us this year did our job, did what we needed to do.
“We were 0.5 (seconds) off the world record in a pool that was arguably, people said it was slower than other pools, so who knows what would have happened if we were in Budapest or other counties where typically world records are broken.”
Bouncing back to cap her 2024 season by defending her 800m gold at worlds in December – delivered under the shadow of godmother Dawn Fraser’s health battles – and starting 2025 with another Pier to Pub triumph, Pallister is looking ahead, excited to start working under a new coach and program.
Part of the Griffith University training squad on the Gold Coast, Pallister will work with British supercoach Mel Marshall, the name behind Olympic breaststroke champion Adam Peaty, after Swimming Australia pulled off the major coup to lure Marshall down under.
Still firmly in Pallister’s coaching corner is mum Janelle, a Commonwealth Games gold medallist, who swam the 400m and 800m at the 88’ Olympics.
“A female powerhouse, which is really exciting,” Pallister said of Marshall.
“And my mum is so knowledgeable in distance swimming.
“If there is anyone I’d want to coach me for distance swimming it would be my mum … still has top 10 times in Australia 30 years on.
“The two of them have some really incredible ideas together and I think the next four years will be really interesting.”
After pouring over a statistics chart with her gym coach – which plotted data from her career against other athletes – Pallister can take confidence in knowing she is yet to hit a plateau in her progress.
“For me, in my opinion the best is still ahead of me, there is so much for me to work on in training,” she said.
“And even the fact I went slower than my best time at the Olympics with Covid and I don’t think I got the best of myself long course last year, I already know there is a PB coming soon.
“It’s just a matter of when I actually put it together and I’m completely healthy and racing.
“I’m excited to move forward, try new things and be a bit refreshed off the back of a pretty hectic three years with all the ups and downs I had.”
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Originally published as Olympian Lani Pallister on Paris disappointment, her health battles and new co-coach Mel Marshall
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