"The skinnier the better" was the message the Campbell sisters heard on pool decks around Australia during the early days of their swimming careers, before one of them would face an undiagnosed eating disorder in the early 2010s.
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A new book by Olympic medallists Cate and Bronte Campbell, Sister Secrets, goes beyond their accolades in the pool and details the realities for female swimmers over the last decade. With Cate recounting how at 15, herself and the rest of the female Dolphins were told to use smaller plates so they would not over-eat in Beijing.
The 2008 revelations come in the wake of Rio Olympian Maddie Groves raising allegations before Tokyo - and subsequently withdrawing from the Australian team's trials - about body-shaming, skinfold testing and young female swimmers being told to diet and shed weight.
Following Groves allegations, Swimming Australia joined other national sporting bodies and asked Sport Integrity Australia to handle its complaints process.
Cate detailed her own experience on swim decks, where she said many male coaches pushed a "the skinnier the better" message growing up.
"I am very fortunate to have grown up in a household where weight was never discussed. I grew up believing that the way I looked would have no bearing. However, I also spent much of my teenage life in swimmers and in an environment where that was not the case," she wrote in the book.
"Weight was, and still is, always a topic of conversation on pool deck or in swim teams. Swimmers in other programs were subjected to weekly weigh-ins - in front of their entire squads - and publicly admonished if they had gained even a few hundred grams.
"I still advocate that we should not be measuring our health by numbers. Not calories, not kilograms, not skin-fold measurements, not clothing sizes."
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One thing the Campbell's are thankful for is their career-long coach Simon Cusack, who provided a body positive environment for the sister-duo in Brisbane.
Thankfully the pair agreed things appear to be changing in the sport.
"I really love that saying 'when you know, better do better'. And I think that's something that Swimming Australia and the Australian swimming culture has really embraced in the past couple of years," Cate said.
"There is shame in not learning from it. And I really believe that that's what swimming's done, we really looked at this in the face and said, 'No, this is unacceptable and we're going to change'."
Cate also speaks about her battle with restrictive eating in the book, which reached its lowest point in 2011 when she found herself crying after drinking a few sips of a decaf coffee with full cream milk.
It all began when she was forced to take time away from the pool due to glandular fever and post-viral fatigue, and the only thing she felt she could control was her weight. She set herself a 1200 calorie diet and kept a diary of her intake, leading to her losing her period.
The 29-year-old has since also shared her diagnosis with depression, and in doing so joined the growing list of professional athletes sharing their mental health journeys publicly.
Australian WNBA star Liz Cambage pulled out of Tokyo on mental health grounds, and US gymnast Simone Biles also withdrew from several Olympic events citing the same.
"I think the more we talk about it, the more we can normalise it, and the more compassion we can have for people as well. Often with mental health, instead of viewing it with compassion, we tend to view it with judgment, whereas a physical injury, we feel really sorry for them, and we don't judge them at all. No one gets judged if they slip over and sprain their ankle, but if you've gone through a challenging time, and you need a little bit of mental support, it's suddenly like, 'Oh, well, why weren't you strong enough?' And we would never ask someone, 'Why didn't you watch where you walked?'," Cate said.
"It's really important to highlight that a lot of people go through these things, and it's not something to be ashamed of. There's probably a lot of people who are struggling with body image or eating disorders or similar, who feel a real overwhelming sense of shame that this has happened to them, and they tend to blame themselves. So many people go through it, and not that it's a normal experience, because you'd never hope that it's a normal experience, but to normalise talking about it and to normalise getting help.
"It doesn't make you weak at all. To overcome anything requires a lot of mental fortitude, but I think to overcome something that's steeped in stigma carries an extra special bit of courage."
Bronte also details her own struggles - sparked by the internal pressures she placed on herself to excel - with her hip and shoulder injuries, accepting help, and learning the difference between vulnerability and weakness.
Although the 27-year-old avoided the topic of body shaming in her own entries, she told The Canberra Times over the last 10 years there had been positive change in the sport and it had moved towards a positive body image approach.
"The fact that women all over the country, and the world, are finding their voice and being able to be like, 'Oh, when you say that, this is the impact', and that's gone unseen for so long, so the fact that we're able to talk about it is great," she said.
"And when they talk about it, people are sitting up and listening, the change that I've seen in my sport ... compared to now, you're seeing a much more positive shift, and more just that awareness of what you're saying and how you're saying it. And it's brilliant to see everyone sit up and take notice."
In addition to the insight into the realities of being a professional female swimmer in Australia over the past decade, it takes readers on a behind the scene look into Olympic and competition meets, life lessons, hobbies, introspection, a lost passport, swimmer's eyebrow woes, friction burns from putting on swimsuits and their lives outside the pool.
The book's overarching message is normalising individual journeys, finding balance and dealing with all the distractions, diversions and speed bumps along the way.
"That's really what we wanted to highlight is there's more than one way to get to a destination, there's more than one way to fulfill your dreams, there is more than one way to live," Bronte said.
"Just knowing that within yourself, you've got your own path and it's fine if it doesn't look the same as someone else's. That's something that I think we both are very passionate about showing."
Like most siblings there was a competitive rivalry, and for the Campbell sisters it came to a head at their first swimming meet in Brisbane.
Bronte had her Olympic dream at age seven and was named age champion, after taking home four medals to Cate's one in Queensland. This led to her medals going missing, before it was discovered Cate had stolen them.
This is the moment the Campbell sisters both locked in their Olympic ambition.
The pair dreamed of competing individually but also together, and it became a reality in London 2012. However, following the main message of the book, the journey there was not all sunshine and roses along the way.
"I qualified for my first Olympics in 2008, and I didn't really feel like the dream had been achieved, because I didn't have Bronte there with me. And so when we got to do that in 2012, and now obviously, the past two Olympics as well, it's just been incredible," Cate said.
"It's one of those things that makes a really corny Hollywood movie script that two sisters sit in the back of the car at age seven and nine and decide that they're going to go to the Olympics together. And then not only do they do that, but then they win two Olympic gold medals together and break multiple world records together. It's one of those things that you just think surely that doesn't happen.
"But what we've tried to do in this book is that although the story and the outcome is this fairy tale finish, the journey to get there was far from it. We didn't just go from the seven and nineyear-old's to Olympic champions with no obstacles and nothing to overcome. And so to to let people know that it's okay to have big dreams, and you should go after and chase them, but you are going to encounter obstacles and setbacks along the way. And that's okay, that's a normal part of the journey and a normal part of the process."
Despite some of the deeper topics discussed in the book, light hearted insights are scattered throughout. Including the fact swimmers often lose their eyebrows due to the chlorine, each Olympics the Australian kangaroo and emu statues go walkabout - with Tokyo not an exception - and swimsuits' aerodynamic features coming at a cost.
As the Campbells and other swimmers put bandaids on their fingers to avoid the friction burn from putting on their swimsuits, and often still do not escape unscathed.
"They're that tight. They're honestly so, so small to put on. And if it's hot and humid, then they stick to you. And putting it on sometimes requires two people, like it is not uncommon for Bronte or myself to be in a change room putting on a suit and you just look at the other person. You're like, 'I need some help. I'm not getting into this by myself'," Cate laughed.
"Fortunately, we were in an air conditioned 24 degree environment around pool deck [in Tokyo]. So that definitely helped. But I think what springs to mind as the worst ever was we were competing at an outdoor event in Singapore. And my goodness, it almost got to the point where I was crying. I was like, 'This isn't gonna go on and my race is about to start, and I cannot get it over my butt'."
"They're so tight, they take over 15 minutes to put on, and that's when you're pulling on them as hard as you can. You just got to take it slow and bit by bit. They're a pretty hectic bit of engineering," Bronte added.