INSPIRE: Cate Campbell

This towering 16-year-old is one of our best swimming hopes at Beijing.
Three days before her 16th birthday, Cate Campbell was giving an interview at Santa Clara, outside San Francisco, where she had just downed American pool-sprint queen Natalie Coughlin. Former Olympic 200m butterfly champ Mel Stewart, working for a swimming news website, was asking Campbell how she stayed grounded given the rocket-ride she had taken to the top of her sport in less than a year.

“I’m just an average 15-year-old,” the ­Australian insisted. “I go to school, I clean out the chickens’ cage, I wash dishes…”

The look on her interrogator’s face at the mention of chickens was priceless. His eyes bulged as he spluttered: “Did you just say you clean out the chickens’ cage?”

Campbell was completely unfazed: “It’s a rather disgusting job, but you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.” And that’s our newest swimming sensation – down to earth, wise beyond her years, doesn’t shirk the hard stuff, and not the least bit average.

Even Bob Bowman, coach of the world’s best swimmer, Michael Phelps, is impressed with Campbell. “She’s amazing,” he says. “She has a beautiful stroke and I have never seen anyone pass Natalie like that in 50m.”

In Australian sporting terms, Campbell could be the best thing to come out of Africa since George Gregan. Born in Malawi, the eldest of five children, Campbell spent her first nine years in Blantyre, a former colonial city named for the Scottish birthplace of explorer Dr David Livingstone. Siblings Bronte (now 14), Jessicah (12), Hamish (10) and Abigail (seven) followed.

Even if the Campbells didn’t have a ­backyard swimming pool, water was destined to figure largely in their early lives – land-locked Malawi is more than 20 per cent water thanks to the ­enormous Lake Malawi. Father Eric is a keen sailor and mother Jenny, “who chucked us into the water as soon as possible”, is a ­former national-level synchronised swimmer.

Campbell spent weekends at Lake Malawi where the children swam and sailed and kept an eye out for angry hippos. “There used to be a rogue hippo that would hang around and attack people and eat the villagers’ crops, until they shot it,” she recalls.

It was an outdoorsy life of bushwalks and bonfires, but eventually the family decided Australia offered a better future and emigrated when Cate was nine. They moved to Brisbane and rented a house in Indooroopilly, walking distance from the local swimming club.

“When we got to Australia we were amazed at how crowded everything was – people were living on top of each other,” says Campbell. “We were also amazed at how clean it was in the streets, and how well everything worked and operated. We were lucky if we had one traffic light that worked in Blantyre.

“I remember school being a bit daunting because I’d been home-schooled until then. But I never really had any trouble fitting in. I think people talked to me because I had a weird accent, which I don’t any more, thank God.”

To hasten the fitting-in process, the elder children were enrolled in the local swimming club, where Simon Cusack and his 1968 Olympian father, Robert, were coaching. Simon Cusack recalls the Campbell children walking into the pool area in their “African home-made clothes”. He immediately noticed and approved of the children’s self-sufficiency. “Australian children are mollycoddled these days, and the thing that kills the talent is that they are soft,” he says. “It’s not that they can’t handle a 70km-a-week beating, it’s that they can’t handle not being able to attain an ­instantaneous short-term goal. In bringing them up this way, we have almost sacrificed what they need to be successful.

“Cate went through hip operations (she tore her hip playing handball at age 11) and other setbacks and her parents made very little fuss. It was more, ‘Get over it, we don’t have the time to mollycoddle you.’ Their attitude was just to muck in and get the job done. It’s hard to know if it’s nature or nurture, but the next child, Bronte, is very similar in maturity. Their mother is a no-fuss lady, very focused, and their dad is a bit of a larrikin who doesn’t give them too much sympathy.”

Campbell says she was “very lazy” at the start of her swimming career and it was ­initially her sister who inspired her to commit to the sport. “Bronte is very driven and she would pull me out of bed to go training,” she says. “I’d slack off and skip laps. Then she reaped the rewards of doing the work and that made me put my head down and work hard.

“I have always wanted to do something special with my life. I think I have always had the dream of being an Olympian.”

Even on appearances, Campbell is special. She is, as she notes, “amazingly tall”; she reached six feet (183cm) before she turned 16 and thinks there is a centimetre or so to go: “I used to be like a stick insect, all arms and legs.” Still slender, she’s proud to have put on a layer of muscle, which is powering her to ever greater heights. She’ll make her Olympic debut in Beijing and is likely to come home with at least one medal. The sport regularly produces teen prodigies but in sprint races, generally regarded as the province of mature competitors, her progress is unprecedented.

While Campbell declares modestly that she is living in world record-holder Libby Trickett’s shadow “and trying to catch her”, the reality is that, at the rate she is improving, Campbell might well be the greatest threat to Trickett’s gold-medal ambitions in the 50m and 100m freestyle. Despite the competition, Trickett has generously provided guidance and inspiration to the teenager. “Her height and her leanness are a great advantage for her; she has very little to pull through the water,” observes the much-shorter Trickett.

But the swimmer knows that Campbell’s presence could spur her own performance: “One of the reasons I’ve achieved what I have is the amount of competition in my own ­back yard. It doesn’t allow me to take it easy – my place on the team is never certain.”

Campbell finished second to Trickett in both sprint events (50m and 100m) at the Olympic trials in March and will combine with her to lead the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay that is defending the gold medal.

At the US grand prix in June, Campbell moved even closer to Trickett’s standard, ­setting personal best times of 24.13sec in the 50m and 53.30sec in the 100m. She is now the third-fastest woman in history in both events and she has barely begun. Hence the need for grounding. “Everything needs to be taken in ­moderation,” Campbell says. “I need to live as normal a life as I can for an elite athlete.”

Cusack is also intent on ensuring she grows up with wings at her heels, but no stars in her eyes. He is protective of her in the public eye, but in private he delivers reality checks. “Cate hasn’t been treated any differently as she’s become more successful, outside the pool or in,” he says. “The biggest mistake is to turn them into princesses, where they think they should be treated differently.”

The coach adds that Campbell has the knack of thriving under pressure: “That’s the hardest thing to find – the ones who can step up under pressure. As a little kid Cate wasn’t a standout, but she had a never-say-die attitude and was quietly determined to improve. We’ve had to change so much due to her hip injury – a lot of her development has been off the cuff, going on what I see on the day and gut instinct rather than the textbook. She does much less volume than other swimmers and she’s very adaptable to any situation.”

Natural equilibrium has served Campbell well: “I like to be put under a bit of pressure. It gets my adrenalin going and my heart pumping.” This is certain to happen at the Olympics when Campbell stands up against the world’s best sprinters, including Trickett, Coughlin, German champion Britta Steffen and 41-year-old American Dara Torres.

“I’m just going for the experience,” she insists. “I don’t have any real pressure on me. I’m not the favourite. I’m 16 and I have a long swimming career ahead of me. If I perform well I’m going to be so pleased and if I don’t, well, I will learn from the experience.”

Cusack’s instinct is to dampen expectations of Campbell lest this creates too much ­pressure, but he can’t hide his excitement about her prospects: “We haven’t seen the best of Cate yet. I wouldn’t like to be racing her, that’s for sure.”