In 2024 Campbell Wilson-Moran was a 16-year-old glued to the TV as Bull Shark Flynn Southam streaked down the pool at Paris La DĂ©fense Arena to pick up two Olympic medals in the 4x100m and 4x200m freestyle relays.
Now just two years later Wilson-Moran is following the Olympian up and down the lanes of the Peter Beckwith pool in training and picking up every scrap of advice on offer from Southam who has taken on the role of mentor.
“Training at Bond has been awesome, especially having Flynn as my training partner. We really push each other in the freestyle,” Wilson- Moran said.
“I’ve only known him for a couple of weeks and he’s already given me so much good advice. It really shows that making the Australian team can be done if you put the work in.”
Wilson-Moran, a newly recruited Hancock Prospecting Swimming Excellence Scholar, has made the move to the Gold Coast this year to study a Bachelor of Journalism.
Hailing from Melbourne, the freestyler has already impressed on the national stage, taking home gold in the 100m freestyle at last year’s Australian Age Swimming Championships.
He was also selected to go to Romania for the Junior World Championships.
“I swam in a lot of relays in Romania which was great, but my main event was towards the end of the program, so I was pretty tired by the time I got to it,” Wilson-Moran said.
“It was my first meet on the junior Australian team, so I gave it a red-hot crack.”
The move to Bond was an easy choice for Wilson-Moran who says the Bond swim program is prominent in the swimming world.
And with Bond’s track record for producing job-ready journalists, he hopes to achieve his aspirations in writing while on the Coast.