Australia's artistic swimming team is hoping a visit from five-time Olympic gold medalist Ian Thorpe will inspires them to a successful 2021 Tokyo campaign.
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Thorpe addressed the team in a short trip to the AIS, and recent Australian call up Alessandra Ho said his words had a major effect.
"He spoke about focusing on why we're doing the sport and why we're pushing ourselves everyday," Ho said.
"We're just doing the same things training hard, day in day out but we need to really focus on the goal and why we're here.
"He also talked about when you're at comps and things may not go the way that you want it's about controlling and to be the best that you can be."
The sport revolves around a mix of swimming and dance choreography. Teams are marked on their execution, impression and the choreographies' difficulty.
The Australian team is focused on performing better than their last two Olympic appearances, during which they finished towards the bottom of the standings at both Games.
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"Our goal as a team is to perform the best we can perform - we want to get a personal best in terms of scoring and we also would really love to beat Egypt which is our closest competitor at the Olympics," Ho said.
"They've always been in front of us just by one spot and I think in 2012 Australia beat them but since then we've just been close behind."
The majority of the team's time during the COVID-19 lockdown was spent online, working on land-based activities such as stretching, cardio and strength training.
"I remember the first time we could be back as a team in November last year and it was just really nice because we hadn't seen each other for months," Ho said.
"I'm nervous and excited, I think right now I'm just working as hard as I can to be the best that I can.
"Like Ian Thorpe said, you can only control what you can do so I'm going to just try everyday to be a little bit better and keep improving so that I can perform my best at the Olympics."
Athletes attending this year's Olympics will only be allowed to travel to and from training and competition venues.
James Buckley
James is a Queanbeyan boy enjoying his second stint at the Canberra Times, more than eight years on from his first. In between he's traveled the world, and spent time covering sport in Sydney.
James is a Queanbeyan boy enjoying his second stint at the Canberra Times, more than eight years on from his first. In between he's traveled the world, and spent time covering sport in Sydney.
