Cate Campbell
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.
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.
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.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 4×100m freestyle relay that is defending the gold medal.
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.”
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