The Olympic swimmer who chases a rubber chicken in the pool

2 days ago 2

Greyhounds pursuit fake rabbits astir a racetrack.

Now an Australian swimmer is chasing a integrative chickenhearted down the excavation successful a bid to triumph his archetypal idiosyncratic Olympic medal.

Matt Temple, Australia’s antheral 100m butterfly champion, booked his summons to a 2nd Olympics this period by edging retired popular prima Cody Simpson astatine the trials successful Brisbane.

Temple loves chickens. The 25-year-old from South Australia adjacent has a chickenhearted pen astatine location successful Adelaide called “Cluckingham Palace”. He has an Instagram relationship devoted to his birds named “Temple’s Tweeters”.

It became known earlier this twelvemonth that Temple had introduced a bizarre grooming method to get his times down earlier the Olympics successful Paris.

“It’s nary joke,” helium said.

Matt Temple is simply a instrumentality of chickens ... successful and retired of the pool.

Sian Barris, a biomechanics and accomplishment acquisition specializer astatine the South Australian Sports Institute (SASI), came up with the left-field thought to assistance Temple.

Tim Rawlins, a show expert astatine SASI, was besides portion of the plan.

At racetracks crossed the country, greyhounds are trained to sprint astir a way and pursuit a mechanical rabbit earlier crossing the decorativeness line.

For Temple, it’s the aforesaid principle, conscionable successful a chlorine pool, arsenic footage provided by SASI shows.

“They connect a canine toy, which is simply a chicken, onto a drawstring enactment and onto a [handheld] drill,” Temple explained. “I’ll enactment the chickenhearted astatine my feet, driblet it down to the bottom, we some accidental go, and they commencement the drill. I pursuit the chickenhearted and spot who gets to the partition first.

“Sian usually comes up with ideas for immoderate benignant of games to assistance maine oregon to assistance support maine funny successful grooming and support maine motivated.”

This masthead was told the rubber chickenhearted has not made its mode to France and is not astatine the Australian team’s grooming basal successful Canet, adjacent the Spanish border.

Olympic swimmer Matt Temple with his pet, Sid.

Temple is an uncomplicated jock who doesn’t accidental overmuch but trains hard.

“Unfortunately, I had to get escaped of 2 roosters a fewer weeks ago. They were making excessively overmuch sound successful the morning,” Temple said. “I enactment them connected Gumtree and immoderate radical collected them. There’s astir apt 7 near and a duck. We’re down from astir 11 oregon 12.”

Temple’s champion person connected the Dolphins squad is 100m freestyler Kyle Chalmers. They were long-time grooming partners successful Adelaide earlier the unexpected quality earlier this twelvemonth their coach, Peter Bishop, had his accreditation for the Olympics revoked pursuing an probe by SASI. No mentation was forthcoming.

It was acold from perfect for the duo, particularly successful an Olympic year. Chalmers moved to the Sunshine Coast to bid nether Olympian Ash Delaney, portion Temple remained successful South Australia successful the anticipation his regular and mentation for Paris would not beryllium derailed.

“It truly rattled maine and the remainder of the squad successful South Australia, and that made it precise challenging for maine successful and retired of the water,” Temple said.

Bronze medallists Isaac Cooper, Grayson Bell, Matthew Temple and Kyle Chalmers aft the men’s 4x50m medley relay last astatine the 2022 satellite shortcourse championships successful Melbourne.

“Normally, I’d spell head-to-head with Kyle successful the excavation and without him determination … I was connected my ain for a mates of months, which I recovered truly hard.

“To beryllium honest, I’ve had a beauteous hard past six months for myself. It’s been a conflict to get here. I deliberation it’s a batch of value lifted disconnected my shoulders [qualifying for the Olympics].”

Temple isn’t successful the apical tier of Australian swimmers astatine the Olympics conscionable yet but is considered an extracurricular accidental for a medal successful the 100m butterfly.

He finished sixth astatine the Tokyo Olympics and 4th astatine past year’s satellite championships. Temple clocked a clip of 50.25 seconds successful December past twelvemonth astatine the Japan Open.

Since then, lone Canada’s Josh Liendo (50.06), Switzerland’s Noe Ponti (50.16) and USA superstar Caeleb Dressel (50.19) person gone faster successful the event. France’s Maxime Grousset won past year’s satellite championships successful 50.14.

On existent form, Temple should marque the 100m butterfly final.

“I went a 50.2 successful December … and I deliberation astir 50.2 could get maine connected the podium,” helium said.

If lone determination was a rubber chickenhearted successful the Paris excavation to spur Temple on.

Sports news, results and adept commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.