Hubi Kós

Olympic champion and European record holder Hubi Kós joins Katie Hoff Anderson in person in Austin, filmed at the University of Texas, to explain what it felt like to go for the 200 backstroke world record in a European Championships semifinal, why a relay gold for Hungary means more to him than his other two gold medals, and why the 2027 World Championships in Budapest feel like the meet his whole life has been building toward.Hubi walks through that 200 back semifinal one length at a time. The goal was never just to qualify; it was to break the world record in the semifinal, something swimmers don't usually try. He went out faster than he expected, felt like he was cruising through the first 100, saw the field two body lengths behind him at the turn and held his rate through the third 50. Then he came off the final wall and everything hit at once. His stroke rate slowed, his legs were gone, and he was left without the little burst of energy he needed for the last 10 meters. He touched in 1:52.30, a European record, just outside Aaron Peirsol's 1:51.92 from 2009.The deeper thread is what he does with that pain now. Hubi says a race that hurts can still mean you did something right, and that the answer is to bring that feeling into training on purpose. He describes a set with Bob Bowman of all out 50s on plenty of rest that looks easy on paper, and how around the sixth one he had to lock in and focus on the pain because it is the same thing he felt when he missed the record. In his words, "those are the moments that are gonna make you better."The second big story is the relay. At 14, Hubi was in the stands at the 2017 World Championships in Budapest when Hungary took bronze in the 4x100 freestyle relay, a medal nobody expected, and the crowd got so loud he could not hear anything. Ever since, he has wanted to win one with a team. This summer Hungary won the 4x100 free relay at the European Championships, with his brother swimming it in the morning. He also talks about turning pro after his last NCAA championships with Texas, why he thinks NCAAs were a harder meet than Worlds, stepping into a team leader role when teammates were nervous before prelims, and why he took his time behind the blocks before his 100 back final. Worlds come back to Budapest in 2027, ten years after he was there as a fan. Before then he wants a lot more from his 100 free, starting with the 48.1 he swam leading off the relay.There is plenty of fun in here too: meeting Gordon Ramsay at the F1 race in Las Vegas with Leon Marchand, Ramsay speaking French to Leon, the Eggs Benedict he would cook for him, and hating Chase Kalisz at 14 for beating the Hungarians in Budapest. Summer McIntosh also joins for a round of Who Is Most Likely To about the Texas pro group: who gets to practice first, who makes Bob's yell tally go up, and the Waymo that made Hubi late.He closes with what the next year looks like: hard training, long days at the pool and a home World Championships he has been chasing since he was a kid. In his words, "we're just going to become better if we lean into the pain." This one is for anyone who has ever been told that a race that hurts was a bad race.-----Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.-----FOLLOW KATIE ON:Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7-----SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSSave up to $500 on select Tempur-Pedic adjustable mattress sets: tempurpedic.pxf.io/3k0Xzkendlesspools.com/unfiltered to unlock $1,000 offIM8health.com/discount/unfiltered for 10% off with code UNFILTERED-----#UnfilteredWaters #HubiKos #HubertKos #Swimming

Ariarne Titmus, the four time Olympic gold medalist from Australia and a two time Olympic champion in the 400 freestyle, joins Katie Hoff Anderson to explain why she walked away from the sport after Paris, what racing Katie Ledecky for almost a decade really felt like, and why she agreed to swim with sharks on TV when her first answer was a flat no.Arnie walks through the year that led to her retirement. After Paris she took a 12 month break, feeling like she was running on fumes, and started living the life she had missed: Sunday night dinners with her family, being there for her friends, and thinking about what she wants from the next ten years. She talks about telling her coach Dean Boxall in early 2025 that she was not ready to come back in May, why she was never willing to return just to make up the numbers, and how the decision finally came down to whether more medals would make her life better.The deeper thread is her mindset. Arnie believes she was born relentless, never worked with a sports psychologist, and describes the thought she took behind the blocks in every final: "So these girls have to beat me." She relives the 2019 World Championships 400 freestyle, the first time she beat Ledecky, from the commentary saying she would fade to the moment she got "a little sniff," and explains why she is grateful Ledecky was her rival rather than someone who took it personally.She also opens up about Shark! on Nine, the series that had her swimming head on with a great hammerhead in the Bahamas despite a real phobia of sharks, and about Relentless, her memoir, which tells her story from Launceston, Tasmania to the top of the sport.There is plenty of fun in here too: her search for a hobby after swimming, pottery full of holes, no hand eye coordination, and a partner who cleans up after she cooks.She closes with the moment from Tokyo she will never forget, her roommates making her bed with paper plates and Freddo Frogs after the 400 final, and the one word she lives by. In her words, "I'm not like anyone else, and no one is like me." For anyone who has ever wondered what it takes to leave the sport on your own terms.-----Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.-----GET ARNIE'S MEMOIR, RELENTLESS:Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GY9P6FGQAllen & Unwin: https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Ariarne-Titmus-Relentless-9781761474132-----FOLLOW KATIE ON:Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7-----SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSendlesspools.com/unfiltered to unlock $1,000 offSee more Speedo products at speedo.com-----#UnfilteredWaters #AriarneTitmus #Swimming

Olympic silver medalist, world champion and short course world record holder Luke Hobson is back on Unfiltered Waters, this time in person with Katie Hoff Anderson at the University of Texas, to talk about Pan Pacs, chasing the 1:42.0 and life as a pro in Bob Bowman's group.Luke won the 200 free at Pan Pacs in front of a home crowd and went 1-2 with Gabriel Jett, and he still left a little disappointed. He explains why. It was his first year as a pro, with no NCAA season and no trials meet, just nine months of training from the end of the World Cup circuit to August. He was close to his best time, but he believed he had a 1:43 low in him, and he talks about what it is like to get one shot at it after all that work.Then the big one: the 200 free world record, 1:42.00, and how close he has already been. Through the 150 he has been about 0.8 under record pace, and he breaks down what he and Bob are working on to hold it home, from 26.0 pace when he is tired to lengthening his stroke on the third and fourth 50s.Luke also takes Katie inside the Texas pro group: the new "prison yard" dryland circuit that has him leaner than ever, the hardest day of the week (Monday color sets), getting beaten by Hubi and Leon on back dolphin kick, and the yell tally on Bob's board. He explains why he is not a data guy and gave up his Whoop, why "Logical Luke" fits, and what he is looking forward to at Short Course Worlds in Beijing's Water Cube.It ends with a rapid fire "most likely to" round about his training partners and his non-swimming goal: a 10 pound largemouth bass.-----Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.-----FOLLOW KATIE ON:Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7-----SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSIM8health.com/discount/unfiltered for 10% offJoin the IM8 x Eight Sleep Strava Challenge: https://www.strava.com/challenges/10054?utm_source=social&utm_medium=challenge_partner&utm_campaign=the_im8_x_eight_sleep_challenge_10054&_branch_match_id=1637224310662617703&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAwXBywqAIBAF0C%2Ba3EYQLfqQsLg5kqlchx6bvr1z1Ky2wblm9JfvfK1divlwppB49vIIYlCTloAqxFYu8JVNfUrIAdNH7CBjDsvKcjdwnJXlxA9re5gnWgAAAAA%3D%3DGet your own Mizuno suit at Mizunousa.comendlesspools.com/unfiltered to unlock $1,000 off-----#UnfilteredWaters #LukeHobson #Swimming

Three-time Olympic champion and 12-time world champion Summer McIntosh sits down with Katie Hoff Anderson in person for the first time, in the Hall of Fame at the University of Texas, to explain what went wrong at Pan Pacs, what she changed afterwards, and what life looks like now that Austin is home.Summer walks through her 2026 season from the inside. She got sick at Canadian Trials, and Bob Bowman was the one who pulled her out of the meet, days after she broke the 200 fly world record in Montreal. That illness cost her the first week of ramping back up, and on top of it she was, in her words, fully over tapered for Pan Pacs. She explains why the meet felt like she could not shift gears, why she stayed up until 3am in her hotel room on the last night writing down everything she wanted to fix, and how she wiped it from her mind before her two weeks off in Toronto.The deeper thread is how she processes a bad meet without dragging it into the next season. She talks about being "either like zero or 100" when it comes to swimming, the small daily habits she is tightening up, from protein after every practice to eight to ten hours of sleep, and the bigger fixes on her turns, her dives and how to train for five events. Her biggest lesson from the summer: "I'd way rather be a little bit under tapered than over tapered."She also gets candid about training under Bob Bowman a year in. He does not hand out many good jobs, he is tapped into every practice, and in her words, "he does not miss a meter." She tells the story of the 200 fly world record she did not think she had in her, turning for the last 50, hearing the crowd and realizing she must be close to record pace.There is plenty of fun in here too: presenting the pole position award to George Russell at the Canadian Grand Prix while dressed head to toe in Red Bull, a 6'10" boyfriend Bob calls "big boy", Katie's theory that the best women swimmers in the world all love to clean, and why Summer tidies her boyfriend's room within five minutes of every visit.She closes with her goal for 2027 outside the pool, learning from her older sister about growing into her own, and why she is skipping Short Course Worlds to train through toward US Open. This one is for anyone who wants to hear how one of the best swimmers in the world handles a meet that did not go her way.-----Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.-----FOLLOW KATIE ON:Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7-----SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSdreamrecovery.io use code UNFILTEREDTHIRTY for 30% offIM8health.com/discount/unfiltered for 10% offJoin the IM8 x Eight Sleep Strava Challenge: https://www.strava.com/challenges/10054?utm_source=social&utm_medium=challenge_partner&utm_campaign=the_im8_x_eight_sleep_challenge_10054&_branch_match_id=1637224310662617703&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAwXBywqAIBAF0C%2Ba3EYQLfqQsLg5kqlchx6bvr1z1Ky2wblm9JfvfK1divlwppB49vIIYlCTloAqxFYu8JVNfUrIAdNH7CBjDsvKcjdwnJXlxA9re5gnWgAAAAA%3D%3Dhttps://tempurpedic.pxf.io/3k0Xzk to learn more about Tempur-Pedicendlesspools.com/unfiltered to unlock $1,000 off-----#UnfilteredWaters #SummerMcIntosh #Swimming

Lani Pallister, the Australian distance swimmer who beat Katie Ledecky in the 800 free at Pan Pacs this summer, joins Katie Hoff Anderson and Elizabeth Beisel to explain what changed when she moved to Dean Boxall's squad at St Peters, why she still expects herself to swim fast, and what it is really like racing the kindest person in the sport.Lani walks through the last 18 months, from a mid-season move in the spring of 2025 to a World Championships final in Singapore that everyone had framed as Katie versus Summer, where she ended up second in 8:05. She tells a lunch crowd that she dropped ten seconds in ten weeks, and Cate Campbell answers from the stage with her own number. She talks about Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacs back to back, the 200 free and 1500 double, and the hug from Katie Ledecky after the 800.The deeper thread is how much of it is mental. Lani says the change with Dean is "more mental than it is physical", explains why she will not shave her legs or have caffeine until after the morning heat, and describes the Monday threshold sets that end with her throwing up, which is why Australian officials now hand her a bag at the end of the pool. In her words, "I dropped 10 seconds in the space of like 10 weeks with Dean."She also gets into Lane Four, the swimming app she built with Kaylee McKeown, Mollie O'Callaghan, Jamie Perkins, Hannah Fredericks and Taylor McKeown, what six founders in a group chat has taught her about communicating, and why surf lifesaving still feels like a place she should be unbeatable, even if she races it less now to protect her ankles.There is plenty of fun in here too: she makes Dean's coffee every second day, her new apartment is mostly pink and has no sofa yet, she carries film cameras around the pool deck, and she lost a chip game in San Diego that sent her onto the lane rope after a race at Pan Pacs.She closes with the rapid fire: her treat meal, her favourite race ever, the last time she cried to Dean that she was bad at swimming, and how she handles people who do her wrong. In her words, "I'll forgive but I won't forget." It is a relaxed, funny conversation for anyone who follows distance swimming or wants to know who Lani is away from the blocks.-----Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.-----FOLLOW KATIE ON:Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7-----SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSdreamrecovery.io use code UNFILTEREDTHIRTY for 30% off-----#UnfilteredWaters #LaniPallister #Swimming

Luka Mijatovic is a newly minted Longhorn, American record holder in the 1000 free, seven-time gold medalist at this year's Junior Pan Pacs and the youngest male to win a national title other than Michael Phelps. The Northern California swimmer joins Katie Hoff Anderson to explain why he committed early to Texas to train under Bob Bowman, why he felt ready to leave his club team now, and how he is setting himself up to make the Olympic team in LA.Luka walks through the summer that got him here. He had almost no time between Nationals and Junior Pan Pacs, stayed in Irvine to train with a small squad, and went through a double taper for the first time, arriving at Junior Pan Pacs with a blank mindset and one goal: do as best he can for his country. He describes what it feels like to walk out to the USA chants with that black cap on, the team room in the Vancouver dorms with the PB and J station and the card games, and the American record in the 1000 free, where he stopped stressing over the times after a rough couple of days and just swam for fun.The deeper thread is how hard he is on himself and how he keeps it in check. One bad rep can send him into a spiral, to the point that his coach has to tell him to chill out, and he explains how he turns a bad day into work on the little fundamentals. He shares the set he is proud of, twenty 200's long course, completely alone in a half lane while the high schoolers tapered, with Katie asking if he was in the buffer lane. He also explains why he skipped high school season, how he stays in his own lane when the comparisons start ("comparison is the thief of joy"), why his coaches keep pushing him even on good days, and how he tries to lap the swimmer three lanes over when nobody in the group can go with him.Then it is all Texas. Luka explains the unofficial visit to see his friends and go to the Texas-Ohio State game, where Texas was down at halftime, some of his group were about to leave, and everything changed once Texas scored that second touchdown and the crowd went electric. After that trip, he told his friends that if he could recommit, he would recommit. He also gets into whose training style he is closest to on the Texas roster, why Bob's program is not a drastic change from his club team, why his one worry is underwaters, and why he thinks college swimming is bigger than yourself.There is plenty of fun in here too: the Snapchat streak that has Katie doing the math, the 90 up-and-outs his group owes if they are late to the start of practice, the driver's license he is about to get in December right before Austin, how long he would wait at a green light before honking (seven seconds, versus three seconds max for his mom), house music, why he dropped the headphones after Nationals, a pickleball game he ranks at top 24 nationals, and walking his dog at 100 percent instead of 20.He closes with the swim that brought him the most joy, breaking eight minutes in the 800 free at 2023 Summer Juniors with his team on the sideline, his brother's birth as the happiest moment outside the sport ("he's like my ride or die"), and the word that motivates him: dedication. In his words, "I want to be dedicated to whatever I do." For swimmers, swim parents, coaches and anyone curious how the next Texas Longhorn thinks about training, this is Luka Mijatovic in his own words.-----Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.-----FOLLOW KATIE ON:Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7-----SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSendlesspools.com/unfiltered to unlock $1,000 offdreamrecovery.io use code UNFILTEREDTHIRTY for 30% offhttps://tempurpedic.pxf.io/3k0Xzk to learn more about Tempur-Pedic-----#UnfilteredWaters #LukaMijatovic #Swimming

Cam McEvoy holds the 50 freestyle world record at 20.88 and is the reigning Olympic and world champion in the event. In a normal 50 training block, he swims about 1.5K a week. Fresh off Commonwealth Games gold in Glasgow, the Australian sprinter joins Katie Hoff Anderson to explain the gym-first, low-volume approach he built after Tokyo, why it runs against so much of how swimming has always trained, and why he believes the sport has not even seen its ceiling for strength yet.Cam walks through the day it started. In October 2022, after more than a year out of the water, his first session back was six parachute sprints of 12 strokes, and it knocked him out for a two-hour nap even though he has never been a napper. Within eight weeks he beat his Tokyo Olympic time in the 50 free, and within nine months he was world champion. He shares the one time his confidence wavered, when he overdid it in May 2023 and his coach Tim Lane told him to stay out of the pool until the meet, and how the 20.88 in China felt like he was ripping air for the first 25 to 30 meters. He also gets into his short course detour into the 100 freestyle, which is about the relay and the fun of something new, and why protecting his 50 free title makes him wary of adding the 4x100 at LA 2028.The deeper thread is trust. Cam explains why the gains from strength and power work happen outside of conscious experience, why that scares athletes raised on threshold sets they can feel, and why he thinks that fear is holding the sport back. He traces the whole idea to a bouldering gym after Tokyo, where climbers who looked like sticks were repping out front lever holds hanging from one finger on each side, and he lays out how he would approach age group training without pushing kids into either sprinting or high volume too early. He also talks about becoming a dad to his son Hartley, and how being home on the floor playing with him 20 minutes after training has changed how he sees the sport. In his words, "I'm swimming in a hole in the ground full of water."There is plenty of fun in here too: the hot tub five meters from the pool where his group sits for 15 to 20 minutes between 25s, smelling salts before a rep, why suiting up to rip a 25 feels like being 18 and discovering the bench press with your mates, his pitch for a 25 meter competition with a live band, ideally metal, and a pre-Olympic 25 race in LA that Katie wants hosted by Unfiltered Waters. Katie, who has a five-week-old at home and is chasing an Olympic Trials cut in the 100 breaststroke, also gets some very direct pull-up advice: "Spam them into oblivion, basically."He closes with the swim that brought him the most joy, a heat in Fukuoka in 2023 that felt like floating down the pool, the messages he gets every week from people who quit swimming 20 years ago and came back to it because of what he has shared, and the one word that motivates him: potential. For coaches, swim parents and anyone curious how the fastest 50 freestyler in history thinks about training, this is the method explained by the person who built it.-----Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.-----FOLLOW KATIE ON:Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7-----SUPPORT OUR SPONSORSIM8health.com/discount/unfiltered for 10% offendlesspools.com/unfiltered to unlock $1,000 offdreamrecovery.io use code UNFILTEREDTHIRTY for 30% offhttps://tempurpedic.pxf.io/3k0Xzk to learn more about Tempur-Pedic-----#UnfilteredWaters #CamMcEvoy #Swimming

Kaylee McKeown returns to Unfiltered Waters, and Katie Hoff Anderson catches her in the middle of the hardest year of her career. Kaylee is a five-time Olympic gold medalist, a world record holder and a world champion, and at the time of this conversation she is back to five swim sessions a week at 4K with no intensity and a heart rate monitor tucked into her cap. Glandular fever pulled her out of the Commonwealth Games and the Pan Pacific Championships and left her watching the rest of the world swim fast without her. This is a conversation about what you do with a season that gets taken away from you.She walks Katie through how fast it fell apart. Three weeks out from trials she was swimming as well as she ever had at a camp time trial, then got sick the day before trials and never got it back. She talks about pace hundreds she would normally hold around 1:04 and not being able to break 1:20, a short course 50 back that told her exactly where she stood, and the tracking her coaches now use to stop her doing the thing every elite athlete does by default. She also gets into leaving an old school volume program for one built on quality, why that change rattled her confidence long before it started paying off, and what it is like to watch Cam McEvoy do a week of work that adds up to her warm up.The deeper thread is who she is doing this for. She tells Katie the pressure before Paris got heavy enough that she broke down in tears halfway through a warm up, and that her coach at the time had to pull her aside and remind her nobody was putting that on her but herself. The mantra she has landed on since is doing it because she wants to, not because anyone expects it of her. She is also direct about the endometriosis and PCOS diagnoses that came after Paris, what stage four has actually meant month to month, and how she is weighing LA 2028 against wanting to be a mother, with Brisbane 2032 sitting there as a maybe if the timing works out. Katie, who went through IVF and egg freezing herself, meets her in the middle of it rather than interviewing her about it.There is also Lane Four, the athlete platform she started with her partner after he asked her one night what she planned to do after swimming, now built out with Molly O'Callaghan, Lani Pallister, Jamie Perkins and Hannah Fredericks. She talks about signing with Under Armour, finding out she is more of a leader than she thought, and how much harder it is to keep a group of strong personalities aligned than to swim a hard set. Then there is Millie, the Bernese mountain dog she bought off the Australian version of Marketplace inside an hour, who is five months old, already 24 kilos, and every bit as stubborn as her owner. Rapid fire covers the cleaning habit her teammates would name first, what a crash out looks like for her, the Aussie slang she has to tone down overseas, and the American pool habit she has never understood.If you have watched Kaylee win everything there is to win and wondered what is left to chase, she answers that here in her own words. It is a conversation about a year that did not go to plan, and an athlete working out what she wants the next one to be for.Note: This conversation was recorded while Kaylee was still early in her recovery, so the training she describes reflects where things stood at the time of recording.Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.FOLLOW KATIE ON: Instagram: instagram.com/kthoff7SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS IM8health.com/discount/unfiltered for 10% off dreamrecovery.io use code UNFILTEREDTHIRTY for 30% off#UnfilteredWaters #KayleeMcKeown #Swimming

In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Katie Hoff continues her Australian series, three and a half weeks postpartum, sitting down with world champion and Australian record holder Sam Short. He just swept the distance triple, the four hundred, eight hundred, and fifteen hundred free, at both Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacs, and broke Grant Hackett's twenty five year old Australian record in the fifteen hundred along the way. So what does it actually feel like to become the swimmer you grew up idolizing.Sam breaks down how data driven his training really is: stopwatch splits, heart rate, lactate readings, and a descending set of 400, 500, 400, 300, 200, and 100 he did weeks before Commonwealth Games with barely any rest between reps. He walks through going out in 742 at trials in the 800 free, blowing up, and still going 1442, then analyzes what it would take to close the gap on the current fastest 1500 swimmers in the world. Katie digs into the recovery side too, and how much he actually trusts data there compared to straight performance numbers.Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews don't: getting disqualified out of an Australian club relay record after a teammate left early, a surf lifesaving background that has him doing beach carnivals every season, a post meet stretch in LA that included a bar owned by a friend of Cody Simpson and, by his own admission, a full week without much sleep, and an ongoing love of homemade spaghetti bolognese he cooks himself three or four times a week. He also admits his first few months living alone came with a washer and no dryer, forcing him to haul laundry home to dry it.Underneath the racing talk is a real look at resetting after a rough Olympic year. Sam is candid that his home Games did not go to plan, and that the version of himself now, more rested, more recovered, and seeing a sports psychologist regularly, is a deliberate rebuild rather than an accident. It is a comeback mindset conversation that lands especially well with Katie, who is working through her own version of that reset with a newborn at home.Whether you're a swimmer chasing a record that once felt untouchable or someone who has never touched a pool but loves a good underdog turned favorite story, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what is one belief about your limits that a single result completely rewrote? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.Note: this was recorded shortly after Sam's celebration stretch in LA, before he resumed full training for his home short course trials, so his prep timeline may look different by the time this episode airs.FOLLOW SAM SHORT ON:Instagram: @_sam_shortSUPPORT OUR SPONSORSdreamrecovery.io use code UNFILTEREDTHIRTY for 30% off#UnfilteredWaters #Swimming #SamShort #KatieHoff #AustralianSwimming

In this episode of Unfiltered Waters, Katie Hoff is back hosting, recording fifteen days postpartum and launching a new run of episodes with Australian swimmers. Her first guest is Olympic champion, world champion, and world record holder Mollie O'Callaghan, who made the gutted call to pull out of the Pan Pacific Championships after stress fractures turned up in her back right before Trials. So how do you walk away from a full season of work and still call that choice smart.Mollie walks through the process: seeing a back specialist, checking in with him repeatedly between Trials and the Commonwealth Games, and getting cleared to race modified instead of sitting out. She still logged a time Katie calls legendary despite the injury, before referral pain and stalled progress ruled out Pan Pacs. She never watched the actual racing, tracking results instead to support the thirteen teammates who competed, and framing every meet, missed or not, as a stepping stone toward LA 2028. She and Katie also cover the altitude tent she trialed for the first time this season under coach Dean, sleeping through three blocks built around a Flagstaff base, a Darwin camp, and the run into Trials.Along the way, the conversation goes places most swim interviews don't: dislocating her knee the first week back after her Olympic year break, buying and moving into a new apartment mostly alone while her family was overseas, badly learning to drive a manual car and bunny hopping through it, and choking on candy behind the blocks with a teammate before a final at the 2022 World Championships. She calls herself a workhorse who trains the same way she has since age fourteen, and admits Dean often has to rein her in.Underneath the racing talk is a real look at what intensity costs her. She now sees a sports psychologist weekly, calls herself a nervous racer whose nerves show, and is candid that the Trials before her home Olympics were the worst meet she has ever experienced mentally, glad in hindsight it happened there and not at the Games. Staying process focused instead of outcome fixated is ongoing work, and it lands differently coming from Katie, relearning her own version of balance with a newborn at home.Whether you're a swimmer rebuilding a season around an injury or someone who has never touched a pool but loves a good comeback story, this episode delivers. Watch the episode, then head to the comments and let us know: what is one setback you have reframed as a stepping stone instead of a loss? Subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast platform, and follow us on social media (https://linktr.ee/unfilteredwaters) for clips, bonus content, and updates throughout the week.Note: at the time of this recording, Mollie's return timeline was still open, with Short Course Worlds and the end of September Australian Trials as her key checkpoints, so her comeback status may look different by the time this episode airs.FOLLOW MOLLIE O'CALLAGHAN ON:Instagram: @mollie_ocalSUPPORT OUR SPONSORSendlesspools.com/unfiltered to unlock $1,000 off#UnfilteredWaters #Swimming #MollieOCallaghan #KatieHoff