Nice one Col, really nice one

You just want to wrap Col Pearse up in your arms and hug him better.

Except he doesn’t really need that, he just wants to think about the next race because he knows he can’t do anything about the one he just finished.

Even when he loses, the boy from Bamawm Extension, and everyone around him, wins.

Because he’s just so bloody nice about it all – and I mean that in the nicest possible way. You’re more disappointed than Col, the hug is just an excuse for you to feel better about how you feel for him.

Yet what Col was actually talking most about was an upcoming break in September and the chance to turn out for a game or two of cricket back home with Bamawm-Lockington United.

But in the real world, the goldfish bowl, as soon as he stepped out of the pool there was a camera and a microphone in his face. No time to process a dream not realised, instead much of the country watching, waiting for him to explain what went wrong.

Not much, as it turns out. Alex Saffy was simply better on the day. That’s racing.

If Col was devastated he was never going to show it. Certainly not to you and me, hardly even to himself.

“It’s never disappointing to share the podium, this was Alex’s moment and I was so happy for him – he is a great friend, and we have now shared gold and silver at successive games, we push each other to be better,” Col told the Red Gum Review from Glasgow last night.

“We were room mates at camp in Germany on the way to Glasgow and we get on so well together,” he says.

You’d hope so. The Australian swimmers fly out of Scotland today, have four days in Australia and then head for California and the Pan Pacs.

Where he and Alex are both listed for, yes, the 100m butterfly.

Col spent his final afternoon in Glasgow grabbing a coffee and shopping, having spent the days between his silver medal and departure finally processing why he did not go as fast as he would have expected, and why he was such a long way from his PB over the distance.

“I had a good sleep in this morning, and the body feels pretty good, and there hasn’t been much time to do anything else because we have been cheering on the Aussie bloodbath in the pool,” he laughs.

“I’m pretty tired but mentally have been through the race, and no, it did not go as I had spent months visualising it would – you always have to imagine yourself winning, don’t you? But when I saw the time it was disappointing because I knew I could do better and had made mistakes – I might have even panicked a bit.”

Not easy to confess. Not to yourself, certainly not to your legions of fans but Col can’t help being honest about, well, about everything.

“The first people I spoke to about the race were mum and dad, who were watching with the family back home and that’s where your real strength is, when you hit the wall, when you are disappointed, they are there to love you regardless, and that’s what they gave me,” he explains.

“They were proud of me, and you know, I was proud of myself too, proud of how happy I was, because with swimming, and the training, training and training it gets tiring, it gets hard.

“I have had my moments, when you’re a country boy in Melbourne it can get to you sometimes, but my love for the sport is back. I have loved the whole season, loved the team and loved my coach, Joel Finck – before the race I made sure I thanked him for the whole, season, it has been so much fun, and he’s been so good to me.

“And most of all I have treated myself with love, talked to myself about the swim, about me and if you can’t talk to yourself like that you’re not going to get over the setbacks and get better.”

The analysis is coming, the review of the whole swim and maybe some tweaks with Col’s biomechanics. That’s part of it too, between coach and athlete – although with very little chance to do anything significant between here and the Pan Pacs.

Beyond that, however, is 2028 and the LA Olympics. Where Col hopes to qualify for more than the 100m butterfly – he’s already thinking the 200m individual medley, 100m backstroke and a relay or two.

With a whopping two weeks off after the Pan Pacs, which Col hints he might be able to stretch to three, the fire still burns bright, and LA and then the irresistible lure of Brisbane in 2032 will keep him pounding up and down the pool.

There’s the ultimate dream. End his international career in his own country.

And while he’s not overly given to philosophy, or even Zen reflection, Col says he has always been grounded by something a great Olympic athlete once told him: “In the end, it’s just swimming”.