Ever since I have been back in Australia it’s been all about training for me. It’s really all I have done as I have had little time for anything else with Beijing just around the corner.

Training has actually been quite hard. The 10 kilometre race in Seville took a lot out of me. It’s the swimmers equivalent of a marathon and just to elaborate on why I looked bloated after the event, there were a number of factors including carbo-loading and swallowing some water while I was out there.

The greater irony is I was weighing 93 kilograms at the time and I like to race at 95, while during the World Championships last year I weighed 99-100 kilograms and no one said anything.

I’ve been asked a lot about what my future holds beyond Beijing and to be honest I don’t really know.

My entire focus right now is Beijing and all I know is afterwards I will be taking a well-earned holiday with Candice. We only had four days for our Honeymoon after all.

In regards to Nick D’Arcy, he has taken his appeal as far as it can really go as far as the outcome is concerned.

At some stage you have to take responsibility for your actions. It is a shame. Nick has put so much hard work into his Olympic campaign, set a new national record and then he has had it all taken away.

Outside of the pool I have done some work on advertising campaigns for Uncle Toby’s, Telstra and Varta Batteries as well as watched an Origin game where I was disappointed with the way my home state played.

It seemed to me like Queensland felt they were the better team and then NSW came out and surprised them, dominating for 80-90% of the game. However being a Queenslander I know they will come back hard in game 2.

I have never actually been to an Origin game because of the timing of training and major events and, along with the Formula One Grand Prix - if it stays - is an event I really want to see when I retire.

Grant

Europe was fantastic and I had a great time over there from the very start. I was able to take in the World Short Course Championships as a commentator for the BBC and really enjoyed that. The coverage was only in Europe so know one would have heard me here.
 
I was told I was actually [...]