SWIMMING: Sisters don’t come much closer than Cate and Bronte Campbell. They’re inseparable – even when standing on an Olympic Games dais with gold medals draped around their necks.
Their dream came true at Rio’s Olympic pool on Saturday night when they won an historic gold together, swimming the last two legs in a come-from-behind victory over the United States of America for Australia’s 100m women’s freestyle relay team.
Now for the really hard part – swimming against each other.
Barring unforeseen circumstances, that’s what they’ll be doing five days from now in the 100m freestyle final, and again two days after that in the 50m freestyle final.
For the moment, though, life doesn’t get much better for the Campbell sisters, who are also training partners, housemates and best friends.
“This is something we’ve dreamed of since we were two little girls,” said little sister Bronte, 22.
“It’s something we play-acted in the pool on a summer afternoon, winning a relay gold medal for Australia. Now there’s an Olympic and world record to boot. You can’t ask for more than that.”
Big sister Cate described it as “incredibly special”.
But such euphoria can’t last. Tomorrow their minds will turn to the next, and perhaps toughest, chapter of their incredible story.
At the London Olympics in 2012 they became Australian swimming’s first siblings to qualify for the same event, the 50m freestyle, though Bronte missed the final by .23 of a second.
They experienced the eerie feeling of going head to head at last year’s world titles in Russia, making history by becoming the first family to share the podium. Bronte won the 100 metres freestyle and Cate came third.
Since then Cate has turned the tables by setting set an astonishing world record, shaving a hundredth of a second off the 52.07s mark set by German Britta Steffen in the now-banned supersuit era.
Which means that world champion Bronte isn’t even the fastest swimmer in her family. “I don’t even get bragging rights around the dinner table,” she says.
Cate has already talked of the strange feeling of battling her own sister for individual Olympic gold, saying: “I want to win and one of the people standing in the way of me achieving my life’s dream is the one closest to me.”
The 24-year-old says she wouldn’t push herself as hard in training if it wasn’t for her sibling, adding: “You can’t be beaten by your little sister.”
Unfortunately, that’s not true. And she knows crazy things happen at the Olympics anyway.
“People you have never heard of swim incredibly fast. Someone from Lithuania won the 100 metres breaststroke in 2012. I didn’t even know that was a country,” she says.
Bronte’s attitude is: “I am not racing against Cate. I am racing against myself. I still like to think of it as me and Cate against the world.”
Cate said: “We race against each other all the time, so it is normal to race against her.”
Cate has said her best outcome is “we just tie in everything”.
Strictly speaking, that could happen, but it’s highly unlikely.
One of the Campbell sisters will probably soon have to watch the other claim individual gold.
No matter which one it is, it promises to be a bittersweet experience.
Either way, their next duels should be among the highlights of the Rio Games.
Doug Conway
olympics.com.au
