Dein erstes Forum » eeling he was a good chance after watching him swi

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Its 1987 and a Brazilian playmaker, known as Mirandinha, is being paraded around St James Park to the passionate Newcastle fans.Its official: Its great to be back in Australia catching up with some friends and family, after what was a pretty incredible couple of weeks in Brazil.Personally, I was pretty happy with how we performed in the 4x100m freestyle relay and proud of the bronze medal the boys and I brought home. It was always going to be a really tough event. Its the benchmark event for a lot of countries and it can really affect the way the whole team performs having that big event up front.So it was a big build-up, but I think we were probably on par with how we wanted to perform as a relay team. We went with the tactics of putting the strongest swimmers at the back of the relay and it panned out all right. It could have gone better but it definitely could have gone much worse. So it was probably right on par with expectations.Obviously there was very high expectations of the wider swim team, and potentially some of those werent met. Olympic gold medals are very hard to win; I can speak from first-hand experience about that.Its hard as an Australian swimmer peaking at that time of the year. The way our trials are set up in April, we have to be peaking then to make the tea, and then youve got maintain those high standards throughout a full Australian, winter which is a really tough thing to do. In summer, most of us train outdoors, were getting up early; but its all bearable because its nice weather and everyone is enjoying themselves.But then youve got to go through winter and thats often when things can fall apart a little, and I think that probably happened on a couple of occasions with swimmers on the team. And then theres the pressure that comes with an Olympic Games, and I think a few people probably struggled with that as well. And thats completely understandable. But I think a few more people will understand now how hard it is to win an Olympic gold medal, and you certainly cant underestimate thaat ever.ddddddddddddWeve got to look at our preparation and I think the time has come to follow the United States lead in staging the Olympic trials much closer to the Games themselves. Judging on the results from the past 20 years or so, the Americans swim fast at their trials and then back it up again at the Games; and then its only a month gap so the swimmers you pick are in form.Were picking swimmers in April and asking them to perform in August, and all sorts of things can happen in between times. I definitely think the American system is the one to follow because theyre the ones winning gold medals.One guy who had no trouble performing was Kyle Chalmers. His gold medal swim in the 100 was superb and I had a sneaky feeling he was a good chance after watching him swim in the relay. He was completely oblivious to the pressure and expectation, and was handling everything perfectly. I had a strong feeling that he could go on with it.I think Cam McEvoy was feeling the pinch a little and Ive experienced that myself a bit going in as the favourite; there was a lot of pressure and expectation on him. But Kyle was just in the perfect position and even the way the race panned out, everything worked perfectly in his favour. It was a brilliant swim.All in all, everyone got along really well -- there was a lot of camaraderie within the Australian team. I think the way that everyone backed each other and supported each other regardless if there were gold medals or fifth, sixth, seventh place finishes of whatever, it was a testament to the strength and unity of the team as a whole.We probably didnt havent the same expectations as a team in London that we did this time, but certainly there was a greater sense of cohesion and togetherness on the team this time around. ' ' '