Congratulations Shaun Champion, Dolphin #843!
Shaun’s outstanding performances at the World Trials granted him selection to World Champs in Japan. Shaun’s events were 50m and 100m butterfly at the Fukuoka World Championships. Shaun would compete on day 1 and day 6 of the campaign. With a five-week preparation from selection, the Australian Dolphin’s team met in Saga, a smaller prefect of Japan.
Saga was a great place to prepare and to become familiar living as a team. We had setbacks of lightning strikes and emergency landslide warnings, which we received in Japanese scribe on our phones at 6am on morning…the warning was for a town nearby. The rain didn’t stop for the first few days which turned out being helpful, allowing us to acclimatise slowly to very hot conditions. Here the routine was eat, sleep, swim and repeat. The team were bonding well, and we were building our energy towards something special.
Shaun and I were able to enjoy a Tea ceremony, and authentic protocol for making tea and enjoying tea, something treasured in Japanese culture. We also learnt how to write Japanese calligraphy by local school children. Shaun used his Japanese heritage, speaking quite well to the high school students…they were most impressed that he knew their native tongue.
We arrived at the Competition venue in Fukuoka, and it was fast paced, especially compared to Saga. Lots of people, big city life and very hot! Warm up pool was the same too…very hot and space limited.
Our Team ABB value of KAIZEN is a Japanese word meaning continuous improvement. KAIZEN brings out our love of learning and working at making things better. We are full of experiences, both in performance and culturally, and are motivated to move forward.
Daring Greatly is definitely something you do at a World Championships. Everyone is at their best and working at their performance execution. Shaun comes away with great learnings from this exposure and his ability to put his best together when the time came. Whilst outcomes are not shown on the scoreboard, the takeaways are profound. I also have my learnings to bring back and will keep growing from the experience.
I was privileged to lead the Mixed 4×100 Freestyle team, selected a heat team and final team and having this unique combination got us a position in the final and then to finish ahead of the world.
Flynn Southam, Jack Cartwright, Madi Wilson and Meg Harris played their role in the heats and then it was up to the final team, Jack Cartwright, followed by Kyle Chalmers, changing over with Shayna Jack and Mollie O’Callaghan. The outcome from all 7 athletes delivered a World Record, Gold medal winning achievement. This team broke Australia’s World Record from Budapest, Hungary in 2022. The team swam in a different order to the previous record holding team. Another chance to sing Advance Australia Fair.
The Dolphins team is a special unit, there was purpose to our actions from team selection to our final team dinner. We worked for each other, we did what needed to happen and the outcome is written in history. The most successful Australian team, we beat USA for the second time ever, we won 13 gold medals.
An outstanding achievement.
Go Aussie Dolphins!
Go Team ABB!
KAIZEN
DARE GREATLY
UNITY
FUN
Happy Swimming 🙂
