CAMERON BRODIE couldn’t help but laugh when one swimming website recently described him as a “stalwart”. He is 24 years old. But such is life in a sport when athletes are breaking world records and winning Olympic medals before they’re even old enough to legally have their first beer.
“Having been a decent junior as well you go quickly from being described as ‘promising youngster’ to ‘stalwart’ or ‘experienced’ and phrases like that,” he says. “There’s probably a shelf life in swimming like there is in all sports. It’s a really young sport and at 24 I’m feeling incredibly old! You maybe have six to eight years at your peak. With the boys that probably starts around 17 or 18 so I feel that I’m maybe coming to the end of that.
“I’m training with Freshers coming in to the university who are able to do things that I can’t do. But it’s nice to see some new faces coming through. I’m part of a generation that’s been quite successful but the ones coming through after us can possibly be even better from what I’ve seen in the training pool.”
Brodie, a former British 200m butterfly champion and part of the Scottish 4x200m freestyle relay team that took a silver medal at the last Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, is already considering just how much longer to go on for and admits that 2018 might be the end of the line for him.
Should he achieve a place at his third successive Commonwealths on Australia’s Gold Coast in April and then qualify for the inaugural European Games in Glasgow later that year, it might represent a fitting way to call time on his swimming career.
Not that Brodie, originally from Inverurie, has fallen out of love with the sport, more that the mental and physical commitment required to continue to compete at elite level eventually takes its toll. After six years as a student at the University of Stirling – he is undertaking his Masters dissertation on siblings in sport – it may be getting close to the point where he has to move on with his life.
“Next year looks fantastic with the way it’s set up with Gold Coast in April and then the European Championships in Glasgow,” he admits. “I think that could be my swansong year if I decide to hang the goggles up, although if I’m swimming really well and Tokyo [the 2020 Olympics] looks a distinct possibility then I might prolong it for a few more years.
“I don’t think anybody retires from swimming just because they’re no longer enjoying it. It’s just that the day-to-day reality of relying on your parents or others to support you, to let you go to training camps and the rest, is unsustainable over the long term.
“Swimming is incredibly demanding on your body for a short period. You don’t get a lot of injuries, no broken bones. So it’s not like I’ll get to next year and my body will be shot. It’s just whether I can get myself up for another two years of 5am starts and really being on top of everything, whether it’s diet, nutrition or the rest. It’s a full-on sport so you can’t really take a day off. It does come to define you and I’m looking forward to one day doing something else.
“Having not done a day’s work in my life the idea of doing a 9-5 is quite scary! But hopefully with my sports management degree I can find a role where I can help other athletes progress having been through it all myself.”
First, though, Brodie must ensure he makes it to Australia, and the Scottish National Swimming Championships that begin in Aberdeen today will give him a chance to post a consideration time having fallen agonisingly short of the mark at the British equivalent in Sheffield in April.
“I was 0.14 of a second off the required time,” he recalls with a wince. “That was annoying and frustrating more than anything. I touched the wall, saw the time and my first thought was, ‘my parents are going to have to wait another six months to book their flights to Australia’. But I had a couple of days off, got straight back in the pool and have been working hard since.
“For the majority of swimmers there are three opportunities to get the consideration times: the British championships, this one and then back in Sheffield again in August. So I’m expecting a lot of fast times in Aberdeen.
“The whole sports village there is excellent – I just wish it had been there when I was younger. I’m sure if it had been there 10 or 20 years ago we would have had a lot more athletes from the north-east coming through.”
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