Hackett, Magnussen, Campbell Expected To Compete in Canberra May 15th-16th

Several of the highest profile athletes from the upper echelons of Swimming Australia and Swimming Japan will be gathering at the Australian Institution of Sport next weekend, as the 2015 Canberra Grand Prix is slated to take place on May 15th and 16th, 2015.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian swimmers Grant Hackett, Cate Campbell, James Magnussen and Christian Sprenger are expected to compete in the uniquely-formatted contest, which combines the Australian Dolphins and world junior team with Japan’s national team, before splitting the entire contingent into three squads for the grand prix meet.  At the time of publishing, no psych sheets/listing of Japanese swimmers was available.

Magnussen is currently ranked 6th in the world in the men’s 50m freestyle and 3rd in the 100m freestyle, and, in light of the 2015 Worlds fast-approaching, he may use this opportunity to possibly fire warning shots back at the likes of France’s Florent Manaudou and Russia’s Vladimir Morozov, who currently hold the top spots in the 50 and 100, respectively.  As for Sprenger, it will be interesting to see how he will fare in the men’s 100m breaststroke event, a race in which the 29-year-old finished 2014 as the second-fastest in the world, but has yet to crack the minute-mark thus far in 2015.

Campbell has been on fire thus far this year, throwing down the top swims in the world in both the women’s 50m freestyle (24.03) and the 100m freestyle (52.69).  Depending on where she is at with her training, a sub-24.0 50 could potentially be in her sights in Canberra.  Eyes will also be on Hackett to see how much further he can lower his already impressive swims from last month’s National Championships, where he finished 3rd in the men’s 400m freestyle (3:46.53) and 4th in the 200m freestyle (1:46.84).

As far as Swimming Australia’s head coach, Jacco Verhaeren, is concerned, he views the Canberra meet as a way to gauge the cohesiveness of the entire squad, as it is the first time the entire Aussie team will have been together since orientation camp post- Australia’s National Championships.  He views the purpose of the meet as “bringing the team together,” Verhaeren said. “Everyone in Australia is training in different places with different coaches and different programs. So a meet like this is very important to bring the national team and the world junior team together.”

Verhaeren specifically pointed to Hackett, the 34-year-old comeback kid, as one of the beacons of motivation within the group of athletes. “It’s great to have a great name from the past to have him back in the team,” Verhaeren said. “What he achieved as an athlete is something that all these Australian athletes and the Japanese athletes are aiming for. He is a source of inspiration for everyone.”

Although he says it’s too early to predict Australia’s performance at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Verhaeren does see this Canberra meet as a stepping stone going into this summer’s Worlds in Kazan.  According to Verhaeren, “We have a great amount of talent in the team.  We never talk about medals or outcomes, we hope to count them after the meet.”

Australia is one of two countries who had signed a “Project 2020” agreement with the Japanese Swimming Federation earlier this year.  In an agreement similar to that of Great Britain’s, the” joint venture” of sorts will include the holding of competitions, joint training programs and other forms of information and resource-sharing between nations in the hopes of readying the younger generations for the 2020 Olympic Games.  We most likely will be seeing more of these inter-country competitions, such as the Canberra Grand Prix, over the next several years as a result of these partnerships.