Cody Simpson’s Olympic dream is hanging by a thread.
The 27-year-old stalled his lucrative singing career to chase his dreams in the pool in 2019 in a wildly optimistic pursuit.
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The talented junior swimmer has already surpassed most expectations, showing impressive improvement and claiming relay gold and silver medals from the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
After his efforts at those Games, Simpson posted on social media his delight at his decision to return to swimming.
“My first Australian team. The 2022 Commonwealth Games done & dusted,” he wrote in part on Instagram to his 5.1 million followers.
“For me, the very act of training morning and night and the thrill of racing is rewarding enough – but to walk away from my international swimming debut with a gold and silver medal is something beyond articulation for now.
“Ready to go back to work, keep improving on my individual events and perhaps explore new territory.”
Qualifying for the Olympic Games was widely considered his ultimate goal and that is now looking a little further out of reach after his effort at the Australian Open championships on the Gold Coast on Friday night.
Competing in the 100m butterfly, Simpson came fourth in a time of 52.32 seconds.
It’s about half a second outside his personal best and well back of some of his rivals, including the long-course 100m butterfly record holder Matt Temple, who dominated the event in a time of 50.8 seconds.
Simpson was also over a second behind second-placed Shaun Champion and needs to find a bucketload of pace ahead of the Olympic trials, fast approaching in June.
Simpson is also competing in the 100m freestyle at the championships, which will give another indication of his standing in that stroke.
Simpson’s struggles comes amid the revelation from girlfriend Emma McKeon that this year’s Olympics in Paris will be her last.
Swimming superstar McKeon is already Australia’s most decorated Olympian and will compete in her third Games in Paris in July.
Predominantly a freestyler, McKeon has a record 11 medals for Australia and sits level with Ian Thorpe for the most gold medals with five.
Whatever McKeon achieves in Paris, she has made a call about her Olympic future.
“I think swimming will always be a part of my life and has been for my whole life so far,” McKeon told the official Games website, Olympics.com.
“But this will definitely be my last Olympics, so I’m excited for that.
“Success for me in Paris would be to swim faster than I ever have before.”
McKeon has just celebrated her two-year anniversary with Simpson.
She took some time off after the Tokyo Games, but then found fresh motivation to continue on for another Olympic cycle.
“My motivation definitely goes up and down,” she said. “But I’ve learnt over the years you can’t really rely on motivation to get you up every morning.
“It’s more about discipline and that’s something I’ve grown more and more over the years in swimming.
“It’s just having my goals in mind and just being disciplined in knowing what I have to do to achieve those goals.
“But I think post-Tokyo, the thing that kept me going was that I felt like I had more to give and I felt like I could go faster and do better.
“So that’s kind of what brought me back to the pool.”