I'm a distance swimmer on the Australian Dolphins team, racing the 10km open water and — across the pool — the 800m and 1500m freestyle.
I race seriously across both pool distance and open water, an unusual combination on the Australian team. The two disciplines reward different things. The pool is a contest of precision: fifteen hundred metres of near-identical splits, executed in lanes that never change. The 10km is a contest of variables — current, water temperature, the swimmers around you, the line you choose around every buoy. They look adjacent on a results sheet. In practice, they train two different athletes. I race both because the contrast is the development: pool work makes the open water faster, and open water work makes the pool calmer.
My base is Brisbane. I train in Queensland and study Exercise & Sports Science at Australian Catholic University, whose Elite Athlete Program accommodates the travel and competition schedule. The academic side isn't separate from the swimming — biomechanics, sleep science and performance physiology feed directly into how I train and recover. The sport is studied, not merely performed.
The career arc beyond Pan Pacs is clear. The long-range goal is Brisbane 2032 — racing at a home Olympics, in the city I grew up in. There is no straight line between here and there: Pan Pacs in 2026, the years of racing that follow, and the run into 2032. Each is a stage, not a guarantee. But the goal is set, and the work is happening. The next seven years are not a wait. They are the campaign.