- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Australia’s swimmers have arrived in Rio ready to kick start the country’s Olympic campaign and happily unburdened by medal pressure from coaches.
The highly-rated swim team touched down in Rio around midnight local time, arriving on a charter flight from their staging camp in Auburn, Alabama.
The charter flight meant they were mostly treated to a row of seats each to stretch out and could also make use of humidifiers.
The Australian swimmers have been tipped to win up to eight gold medals in Rio in what would be a major turnaround from the lamentable London Olympics campaign four years ago.
Plenty of lessons have been learned from that chastening experience and the team were making no bold statements on arrival in the Olympic city five days before competition starts.
Veteran freestyle star Bronte Barratt said they were dealing well with public expectation that comes with the territory for the Australian swim team going into the first week of the Olympics.
“It’s because we’re the first event and typically we do get the most (Australian Olympic) medals,” said Barratt.
“But coming from our head coach there’s no expectations within the team which is really great.
“There’s no talk about medals or records, we’re just going to give it our best shot.”
Barratt, who will contest the 200m freestyle and 4x200m relay in her last Olympics, said their training camp couldn’t have been better.
“It was probably one of the best staging camps I’ve been on,” Barratt said.
“It was a lot of fun and we got some hard work done and I think we’re ready to go.”
Barratt said the many Olympic rookies had brought a freshness to the team.
“It’s so fun watching everyone go through the experience for the first time,” Barratt said.
“It doesn’t make me any less excited.”