Cody Simpson is slogging through 18 hours a week of swimming and another four hours a week of gym work in his wild bid to go from pop sensation to Olympic swimmer.
In the eyes of Swimming Australia head coach Rohan Taylor, the 27-year-old is a genuine contender for an Olympic spot in his specialist event, the 100m butterfly, and his commitment to his goal is “extraordinary” and “to be admired”.
Saturday marks 100 days until the beginning of the Australian Swimming Trials, where Simpson will take on Matt Temple and possibly Kyle Chalmers, among others, in his fight for butterfly selection, as well as Temple, Chalmers, Flynn Southam, Jack Cartwright, Kai Taylor and a host of others as he vies for a spot as a 4x100m freestyle relay swimmer.
FOLLOW LIVE: New Zealand v Australia first Test day three
READ MORE: Brilliant Aussie soars to world titles indoor gold
READ MORE: Brutal reality facing Aussie Olympic shooting champion
“He’s put himself right in the mix. He’s right there in the 100m fly,” Dolphins coach Taylor told Wide World of Sports.
“Matt Temple is clearly the lead in the 100m fly, and behind him you’ve got four or five there that could grab that second spot, and Cody is one of those.
“It’s going to be a tough 4x100m relay team to make because we’ve got some really good young ones coming through, as well as the established Kyle Chalmers, and you’ve got Matt Temple … throwing down some good 100m frees.”
At the Queensland Swimming Championships in December, Simpson ripped a 51.67 to clinch the 100m butterfly title. He chopped 0.11 of a second from his personal best to equal the Olympic qualifying time, but fell just short of Swimming Australia’s Olympic qualifying time of 51.17.
About a week before Simpson’s title-winning swim in Brisbane, Temple had clocked 50.25 to shatter the Australian 100m butterfly record at the Japan Open in Tokyo.
Shaun Champion (51.54), Chalmers (51.61) and Jesse Coleman (51.66) also have faster 100m butterfly personal bests than Simpson.
Temple and those three men beat the chart-topping star in the 100m butterfly at the 2023 Australian World Championship Trials in Melbourne, Simpson touching the wall in fifth place.
If the Gold Coast product is to snaffle a ticket to Paris, he must slice half a second from his personal best and finish in the top two at the trials in June, taking place in Brisbane.
He’s been open about his punishing training regime on Instagram, detailing the kilometres he’s clocking up and the gym work he’s punching through, as well as the physiotherapy, naps, ice baths, meditation and visualisation that allow him to recover and go again.
“I think in Cody’s situation, coming from being successful with his art and having the same type of application with his art and music and singing, and then transitioning into this sport, which he hadn’t done for a long time, and then immediately throwing himself in and applying himself and getting himself into the position here is to be admired,” Taylor said.
“He’s deserving of being where he is right now. He’s worked really, really hard for this, as all elite athletes do, but he’s come into it late and then thrown himself in and been able to put himself in that position, which I think is pretty extraordinary.
“There’d be a lot of reasons to not do it — it is a very difficult thing — and he’s really gone about it the right way … His ability to stay at it … has impressed me.
“It is a grind … I watched [Australian 400m freestyle world champion] Sam Short the other night putting himself through some really hard conditioning work just to get that opportunity to perform. You just watch them do that and you think, ‘Ah, geez, these guys have really got it’.”
Simpson trains under renowned coach Michael Bohl at Griffith University’s Gold Coast campus, as does his partner, five-time Olympic gold medallist Emma McKeon.
“I think it’s the consistency to be able to hold and maintain and do that hard work which has impressed me about Cody,” Taylor said.
“If it doesn’t happen quickly, sometimes some people go, ‘Well, maybe I don’t want to go through it’.
“Cody is investing the time, he’s making the commitment, taking every opportunity.”