A DECADE after he made his first Australian team, Ashley Callus is swimming better than ever as he gears up for his third consecutive Olympic Games.
The Cleveland resident swam a career best in the 50m freestyle at the Telstra Grand Prix at the weekend.
He clocked 22.01 seconds to win the race and cement his position as the second fastest Australian in history (behind Eamon Sullivan).
Ashley first came to national attention as a 19-year-old when he won gold at the 1998 Commonwealth Games as part of the 4x100m relay team.
Two years later he was back in the spotlight for the same event at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, when the Australian team beat the American favourites to win gold in world record-breaking time.
His star continued to rise with a string of medals at various championships and Commonwealth Games until, in 2004, something went wrong.
The Athens Olympics should have been Ashley’s greatest moment – he had individual berths in both the 50m and 100m and was all but guaranteed a place in the relay team – but instead he crashed out in the preliminaries and was dropped from the relay final.
He later revealed he was suffering the effects of a virus.
“I think every athlete at some stage of their career experiences the sheer joy of success and the sheer low of disappointment and obviously Athens was that for me,” Ashley said.
He took a year off to recover from the virus and says he contemplated retirement “a couple of times” until a Channel 7 sport promotion in late 2005 gave him the incentive to get back in the pool.
“I watched a replay of the four-by-one and I saw myself with the winning relay team in Sydney with Klimmy and Thorpe and Fydes and thought I'd like to be a part of that, so I guess that was the start of the long road back to where I am now,” he said.
“Once I got back into it, I thought should I get to Beijing, that's my time to make up for the disappointment I had in Athens.”
He moved to the Gold Coast to train, but returned to Cleveland in November last year to rejoin longtime coach Chris Urquhart and fitness instructor Kev Rogers for his final Olympic push.
At the trials in March, the 29-year-old recorded a (then) personal best time to secure himself an individual spot in the 50m freestyle and berth in the 4x100m freestyle relay team.
“From where I was 12 months ago, I probably wouldn’t have even made any of those finals my performances had dropped so severely, so to do the times in the positions I finished in at trials I was very happy and relieved,” Ashley said.
He’s now training hard ahead of Beijing – even cutting out his beloved pastries and donuts at the behest of the team dietician – and is quietly confident another medal could be on the cards.
“I think now that I know what the Olympics is all about, being there twice before, you kind of know what to expect and nerves won’t play such a big part any more.”
Ashley has another motivation to do his best – he’s retiring from swimming to pursue real estate after the games and wants to go out on top.
“Knowing that I'm retiring after this, all my energies and focus will be going into it,” he said.
“I didn't want to leave my career and go ‘I should have, could have, would have’.
“I always thought my better swims were in front of me and I’ve proved that and I’m hoping that the improvement keeps coming, just until Beijing. I don’t care what happens after that!”
Email a friend