Barely an hour after the Australian swim team had completed a successful meet at the Paris Olympics, the Dolphins head coach, Rohan Taylor, was already looking to the future. “We’ll go back to the drawing board,” he said on the pool deck. “Performance by design” is one of his often-repeated mantras. So relentless is the pursuit of gold that the following morning, the Dolphins held a debriefing session to reflect on improvements ahead of the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
In the year that followed, Australia’s swim stars have enjoyed time away from the pool. Some retired – the nation’s most successful Olympian of all time, Emma McKeon, brought the curtain down on her glittering career, and had a local pool named in her honour. Some tried their hand at other activities – 50m and 100m freestyle star Shayna Jack featured on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!, while middle-distance titan Ariarne Titmus is still out of the water, recently on commentary duties at the Australian swimming trials.
