Sisters Bronte and Cate Campbell open up about being each other's toughest opponents at Rio. By Andrew Stafford
Up, down, turn, repeat. Up, down, turn, repeat. Chasing that black line down the bottom of the pool. The cold mornings; the brutally early starts. Such is life of an Olympic swimmer.
When you go home, before your midday nap, you can have some breakfast. And - if your surname is Campbell - your main rival in the events in which you'll be competing will be sitting across from you at the table. 
Cate and Bronte Campbell are a selfperpetuating story of sibling rivalry and love. In   August, they'll face off in the 100and 50-metre freestyle events in the 31st Olympiad at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Australian swimming has been beset by controversies in recent years. There was the relative failure of the London team; the troubles of Nick D'Arcy and Grant Hackett, the drug convictions of Scott Miller and Geoff Huegill. It's time for another Golden Girl. Now we have two.
This will be Cate's third Olympics and Bronte's second. Cate is 24 and already owns two Olympic bronze medals and a gold relay medal. Bronte is 22. In 2014, the pair were part of a world-record winning 4 x 100m relay swim in Scotland.
In the London Games of 2012 (when Cate was struck down by pancreatitis) they were the first Aussie siblings on the same swimming team since 1972. Barring misfortune, this time it's different.
They're older. They're faster. They're intimately familiar with each other's strengths and weaknesses. They're rivals.
They're sisters. And there's pressure.
Both ambassadors of wellness brand Swisse, the Campbells seem to eat that pressure. Asked how much that one- or two-hundredths of a second mean, in the event they go one-two in Rio, and they grin.
"It matters a lot," Bronte says, still grinning. And if it's between the two of them? "That's a pretty good outcome, really. I know that that sounds stupid, but it's not just me and Cate competing; there's the rest of the world there.
"So if an Australian can finish one-two, that's amazing. If as sisters we can finish as one-two, that's even more incredible." Bronte is tall, at 179cm, but her older sister towers over her at 186cm. Cate has the broader shoulders, the narrow hips, the longer reach. But it's not all about physique. Bronte is quicker out of the blocks, and possessed by the will to win.
"When I was seven, my coach had to stop me from doing too many sessions," she says. "'No, you're only allowed to train once a day.' 'No, you can't train on Saturdays' - he was making sure I wasn't doing too much at a young age." They grew up in Malawi, in southern Africa, before emigrating to Australia in 2001. Their mother was a synchronised swimmer. "I don't remember learning how to swim; I've been able to swim since before I could walk," Cate says.
Cate is the breezier personality. She had to learn to push herself. "I was extremely lazy," she says. "One of those kids that would purposely let people lap me so I could skip out on 50 metres.
"And then tyrants like Bronte would be like [in a high child's voice], 'I lapped you!
You've got another two laps to go!'" Sick of seeing her sister wearing her junior medals at the dinner table, she knuckled down.
"All I wanted to do was be as good or better than Bronte. And her dream was to go to the Olympics, so my dream became, 'I now have to go to the Olympics.'" She got there first, to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. "I was very young and very naive and very lonely at my first Olympics, and then got very sick and underperformed, understandably, in 2012," she says.
"That was Bronte's first team, and statistically people perform a lot better at their second Olympics, because it's such a whirlwind and so unlike anything else you can possibly imagine or ever experience." What shines through about the Campbell sisters, though, is a sense of balance. The expectations of a nation mean little to them.
"It's always you against yourself," Bronte says. "If you swim the perfect race, you do everything right, and someone out of nowhere comes and beats you - especially your sister, it doesn't mean you've failed." "It's great to have the whole of Australia behind you, but it's down to you. No one is going to be happier if you win than you and nobody is going to be more disappointed if you don't do your best." And they genuinely love what they do.
"You've got less than a minute to put all those years of hard work into practice, and there's lights and there's cameras and there's atmosphere, and there's adrenaline.
You never feel more alive than when you're behind the blocks," Cate says. "There's no point doing all of this if you're not having fun," Bronte says. Besides, she says, "normal life is a terrifying prospect. I like having my midday naps."
BRONTE Age: 22
EVENTS 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay Women 50m Freestyle Women 100m Freestyle Women
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS World Championship gold in the 50m and 100m freestyle in Kazan, Russia 2015; Setting a World Record as part of the women's 4x100m freestyle relay team at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, 2014; Medallist at Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 2014
IF I COULD TRY ANOTHER OLYMPIC SPORT IT WOULD BE: Diving
Follow Bronte on Instagram @bronte_campbell
CATE Age: 24
EVENTS 4 x 100m Freestyle Relay Women 50m Freestyle Women 4 x 100m Medley Relay Women 100m Freestyle Women
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Qualifying for my first Olympic team in 2008; Winning a Bronze in the 50m freestyle at the 2008 Olympics; Winning my first World Championship title in the 100m freestyle in Barcelona 2013
IF I COULD TRY ANOTHER OLYMPIC SPORT IT WOULD BE: Pole vaultFollow Cate on Instagram @cate_campbell