By Matilda S (Year 12)

Have you ever had someone you can’t beat? 

It may have been a fellow student in the classroom, a friend on the sports field, a sibling, or even someone you’ve never actually personally interacted with; just a stranger who you watch from afar, tracking their results as if they were their own.  

For me, this constant creation of competition is a daily occurrence. No matter who it is, where we are, or what we’re doing, I obviously have to win, right? What’s the good in being second best, touching the wall in second place, getting the third-best high score. Well, what if rivalry actually pushed you to be better, improved your performance? 

For example, a university study discovered that long distance runners actually ran about 4.92 seconds faster per kilometre when racing against a known rival.  

But more importantly, (in my professional and completely non-bias opinion) rivalry in swimming, a sport which is highly individual and to a certain extent, purely a mental battle, is a necessary part of growth. 

The rivalry between Ariarne Titmus, Australia’s golden girl, who is now the back to back champion in the Women’s 400m freestyle at the Olympic Games and Katie Ledecky, one of, if not the greatest long distance female athlete the world has ever seen, has been a powerful driver of setting new world standards and inspiring the new generation of swimmers. Ledecky’s dominance set an exceptionally high benchmark. To put her dominance in perspective, out of the 25 fastest ever times for the 800m freestyle, Ledecky holds 23/ 25 of those times. Ledecky’s almost inhumane level of performance motivated Titmus to elevate her training intensity and race strategy, ultimately leading to her breakthrough victory in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics 400 m freestyle, where she out-touched Ledecky in 3:56.69, a difference of only 0.67 seconds between the pair. In response, Ledecky continued to refine her technique and endurance, showing that Titmus’s rise had reignited her competitive edge, after competing on the world stage for over a decade. Their rivalry went even further in 2022 when Titmus broke Ledecky’s long-standing world record by 0.06 seconds, a moment made possible by years of chasing Ledecky’s standard. Both athletes have openly acknowledged that their competition fuels their motivation, creating a high-performance environment where each swimmer’s success pushes the other to continually improve. It is important for rivalry to remain in this healthy state of motivation, rather than toxicity from the media. 

But it is not just professionals who can use rivalry as a burning fire in the belly, in fact, Ariane Titmus was only 12 years old when Ledecky was competing on the international stage and was equally inspired as any other aspiring athletes who dream of becoming an Olympian themselves. Even for me, someone who finds it hard to enjoy competition without the pressure of winning, rivalry has been a necessary part of my development as an athlete, pressure will always be existent, but to exercise it healthily is a weapon, not a detriment to performance. “Competition is a rude yet effective motivation.”