Cody Simpson in major announcement about end of swimming career
The Aussie has confirmed his swimming career will come to an end after the Paris Olympics.
Australian popstar turned swimmer Cody Simpson has announced his swimming journey will end following the Paris Olympics. The 26-year-old put his music career on hold in 2019 to chase his dream of qualifying for the 2024 Olympics.
Simpson was a successful swimmer as a child and he quickly picked up where he left off. Within five months of returning to the pool, he qualified for the Olympic trials in 2021. While he didn’t make the team he did make the 100m butterfly final.
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Since then Simpson has competed on the world stage at last year's Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. He won a gold and a silver medal as part of the 4x100m freestyle and 4x100m medley relays after he swam heats for Australia.
Simpson had suggested the Paris Games may be his last and has now confirmed that is the case in a recent Instagram post. "I've been doing this every day for over three years now," Simpson wrote on Instagram. "There are only eight months left in my swimming journey which I believe calls for more content and updates on the path.
"Training is going well. I give whatever I have to give every day. Learning a lot about myself. Loving feeling this healthy."
Simpson will attempt to qualify for Paris in the 100m butterfly and 100m freestyle events. The men's qualifying times for the 2024 Games in the 100m freestyle is 48.34 and for the 100m butterfly is 51.67.
Simpson’s best times are 49.11 in the 100m freestyle and 51.78 in the 100m butterfly, both currently outside the qualifying times for Paris. At the close of his swimming journey Simpson has previously stated that he will return to pursuing a professional music career.
Simpson says fear of failure is what drives him for Paris qualification
Simpson says the 'fear of failure' is what is motivating him to succeed at the 2024 Olympics. The award-winning musician told Sunrise earlier this month that he is driven by wanting to prove people wrong.
"I think coming back into the sport of swimming and doing it the way I did, I was inevitably going to face a lot of doubters and a lot of naysayers and things like that," he said. "Fear of failure is often what gets me up in the morning."
The singer is preparing to qualify for his Olympic debut in Paris next year, admitting that the mental toll of his high-profile career in both the entertainment and sports industry is 'taxing'. "I think I’m one of the luckiest people in the world to have the group of people around me that I have, from my family to my coach to my training partners," he said. "We do about nine sessions in the pool a week, about an hour and a half to two hours each session, and that’s accompanied by three gym sessions a week (which are) about an hour and a half as well."
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