Kyle Chalmers reveals he almost QUIT swimming over ‘stressful’ love triangle saga

Kyle Chalmers was very close to walking away from swimming amid the love triangle saga engulfing the Australian team, insisting that the ordeal was ‘stressful’ and ‘complete nonsense’.

Chalmers has been 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’s world championships backflip – in which he U-turned on his decision to skip Budapest, thereby denying Simpson a place on the team – resulted in allegations that his call was not purely based on swimming.

The story did not 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 composed a retirement statement when he ditched the national championships to return to his hometown, Port Lincoln, where he considered giving everything up to play country footy.

‘It was very, very stressful,’ Chalmers told the Soda Room podcast. ‘I was going to say, now I’m done – I’m going to stay in Port Lincoln now and play country footy.’ 

Chalmers was in the eye of a love triangle storm involving Emma McKeon and Cody Simpson

The 24-year-old was at an all time low in Birmingham, where he wanted to go home

He says that any suggestion that he kept Simpson out of the team for Budapest was ‘absolute cr*p’ but it wasn’t until the Commonwealth Games where he reached an all-time low. 

On the second night of the competition, amid constant questions around a supposed rift between the trio, Chalmers took to social media to say his mental health had hit ‘rock bottom’.  

‘We just broke the Commonwealth record and we won gold … and they’ve just teed off,’ he says. ‘Not one question about swimming … It was all complete nonsense, this so-called feud. There was no feud whatsoever. 

He was spurred on by his brother and adopted a celebration to silence his critics

Shortly after that post, he asked Swimming Australia officials to send him home, having been ‘ripped to shreds’ by the poolside media despite winning 4x100m relay gold.  

‘I go back to my room, very, very emotional – just mentally down. I honestly spoke to the head team manager of Swimming Australia and said: ‘Put me on the next flight home – I don’t want to be here, I don’t swim for this, it’s just crap’.’ 

A FaceTime with his brother, Jackson, who is serving in the army, helped Chalmers get his head straight, and soon after he adopted a ‘shh’ celebration 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’ come Paris 2024, where he plans to compete in freestyle and butterfly.