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Kyle Chalmers reveals he almost STOPS swimming over ‘stressful’ love triangle saga, as Australian gun admits he was ‘crying’ in his room just hours before he won Commonwealth gold
- Kyle Chalmers has admitted he almost gave up swimming this year
- The 24-year-old was in the eye of a love triangle with the Australian team
- His ex-girlfriend and swimmer Emma McKeon is dating Cody Simpson
- Chalmers says he cried at the Commonwealth Games and wanted to go home
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Kyle Chalmers was about to walk away from swimming amid the love triangle engulfing the Australian team, insisting the ordeal was “stressful” and “complete rubbish”.
Chalmers is in the eye of a media storm over his involvement in a love triangle with ex-girlfriend Emma McKeon and fellow swimmer Cody Simpson.
The 24-year-old World Backflip Championship – in which he reversed his decision to skip Budapest, denying Simpson a place on the team – resulted in accusations that his call-up was not purely based on swimming.
The story didn’t go away during the Commonwealth Games, where all three swimmers competed for Australia in Birmingham, and Chalmers says he spent the hours leading up to his 100m freestyle race crying in his hotel room.
He also said he had prepared a retirement statement when he left the National Championships to return to his hometown, Port Lincoln, where he considered giving up everything to play country footy.
“It was very, very stressful,” Chalmers told the… Soda Room podcast. “I wanted to say, now I’m done – I’m staying in Port Lincoln now and playing country footy.”
He says any suggestion that he would keep Simpson out of the team for Budapest was ‘absolute cr*p’, but it wasn’t until the Commonwealth Games that he hit an all-time low.
On the second night of the match, amid constant questions about an alleged breakup between the trio, Chalmers took to social media to say his mental health had hit rock bottom.
“We just broke the Commonwealth record and won gold… and they’re just getting started,” he says. “No question about swimming… It was all complete nonsense, this so-called feud. There was no feud.
Shortly after that post, he asked Swimming Australia officials to send him home after he was ‘torn to shreds’ by the media poolside despite winning gold in the 4x100m relay.
“I go back to my room, very, very emotional – just mentally down. I spoke honestly with the Swimming Australia main team manager and said ‘Put me on the next flight home – I don’t want to be here, I’m not swimming for this, it’s just rubbish’.
A FaceTime with his brother, Jackson, who serves in the military, helped Chalmers get his head straight, and shortly afterward, he adopted a “shh” party in which he put his finger to his lips to silence his critics.
He added that the fiasco has made him stronger and that he will be “bulletproof” in Paris 2024, where he plans to compete in freestyle and butterfly.