Cate Campbell Plans to Sit Out Commonwealth Games

“Cate Campbell won’t be swimming (in Birmingham) but primarily, we will have a very strong team. That is our plan,” Taylor said, according to the AAP. “The open conversation is ‘go away, have a think, then come back to me and tell me what I can do to provide support for you.’ Obviously I don’t want anyone to finish swimming if they have got the motivation and desire – it’s always that encouragement to really spend time before they do that (finish).

Taylor added, “Cate and I have had a number of chats… so I am very aware of her strategies.”

This is not the first time Campbell has employed the strategy of skipping a major championship meet after the Olympics. After 2016, when she arrived in Rio as the gold-medal favorite in the 50 and 100 freestyle but failed to win an individual medal, she sat out the 2017 World Championships before returning to elite competition in 2018. Campbell’s strategy paid off beautifully that time, as she recorded arguably the finest meet of her career at the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships with five gold medals.

This time, though, it’s unclear whether or not Campbell plans to return to international competition in the future. Just weeks after the Tokyo Olympics, she admitted that she planned to take time and consider her future, and she has not raced since the Olympics. Should she choose to pursue an appearance in Paris, Campbell would compete at age 32 — half a lifetime after she made her Olympic debut as a 16-year-old in 2008.

In Campbell’s first Olympics in Beijing, she earned bronze medals in the 400 freestyle relay and in the 50 freestyle. She has remained among the world’s best sprinters since then, and the 29-year-old captured bronze in the 100 free at last year’s Tokyo Olympics for the second individual Olympic medal of her career (and the first since 2008). Campbell also anchored gold-medal efforts for Australia in the 400 freestyle and 400 medley relays in Tokyo.

Read the full report from the Australian Associated Press (via Lithgow Mercury) here.