Steve Titmus looks back on his daughter Ariarne Titmus swimming career + how she became Australia's best 10:38

Steve Titmuss is Ariane's father and of course her number one fan. I'm pleased to say he's on the line live from Paris now. Steve, g'day.

Chris, g'day to you, g'day to everyone back home in Australia. I've been looking forward to speaking to you for weeks and weeks and weeks. Jeez, you must be proud, mate. Oh, mate, quite incredible. I was enormously proud. And leading up to that 400-metre final, Robyn, Mia, Aunty, Sister and I, we sat by the edge of the pool and looked across it and thought back to when...

Ariane first learned to swim when we made the move from Tasmania to Queensland nearly 10 years ago and said we never dreamed in our wildest of imaginations that we would be at the center of you know the most extraordinary stadium that's ever been assembled for an Olympic swimming event

And the atmosphere was just electric. And so we're just enormously proud of what Arnie's achieved. And really, the other night when she won that 400 was just a result of extraordinary hard work.

And, mate, good news is my voice has finally returned. That's good for a newsreader. Mate, you're not wrong. And, look, it was just... I know when she had 25 metres to go and there was no way known that they were going to catch her. I literally got the shakes of...

a big excitement and a realisation that, you know, a little girl who dreamt of not only going to the Olympics and not only winning an Olympic gold medal, but then being able to back up the two Olympics in a row, that dream came true the other night on the 400. And hopefully we've got still more to come. Absolutely. So take us back to...

I don't want to do a history lesson, but take us back to Launceston in the public pool. In Tasmania, swimming, especially outside, I could imagine it'd be pretty cold. When did you notice, though, and when did you realise, when did it dawn on the Titmuss family that Arnie was different?

Yeah, we... You know, Dan and Tassie, the situation down there was that there wasn't the high level of coaching that exists elsewhere in Australia, and particularly in South East Queensland. You know, we went to... She was a young 13-year-old, and she won a national championship at the Sydney Aquatic Centre. I think it might have been the 200 metres that she won. And there was a group of Melbourne kids who were sitting in front of us. And when she won...

One of them turned around and looked at us and said, Tasmanians aren't meant to win. That's what he said. He has. She has. And then she got selected then in the Australian junior team to go to a trip. I think it was to Samoa or Hawaii, I think it was. And...

We then knew that there was something special with her. Her coach back then at the time was a guy called Peter Gartrell. And he said, I can't get any more speed out of Arnie. I can get endurance out of her, but I can't get any more speed. You guys are going to have to find a coach somewhere else in Australia who's able to get more speed out of her. So literally it was an elephant one bite at a time. We sat down as a family. We decided together that we would make this journey north and south.

We had about a month to make up our mind. You know, in swimming, you haven't got 18 months to sit around and think, oh, what are we going to do? We literally had a month. We had to work out what we're going to do career-wise. We had to spend the next...

six odd months selling up for family home. Robert and the girls moved up to Queensland six months before I did. I stayed back in Tasmania to complete a contract I had there and also to pack up and sell the family home. So, you know, and we look now and even we've spoken about this several times in the past 24 hours, and that is that what if we hadn't have made this move? You know, this week may never have happened.

But Steve, it takes, as a family, it's an enormous sacrifice because there was no way telling that a 13-year-old would become Ariane Titmuss and done what your daughter has done. Do you think that sacrifice, in a way, has driven Arnie to this success?

Oh, look, I think, look, a couple of things with it. We always like to call it that we make choices, not sacrifices in relationship to what we've done. And our thing was that we said to the girls, you know, Arnie's dream was to be an Olympian. And we said, hey, guys, as parents, we need to have the responsibility of giving our children every possible opportunity to chase their dreams. And we said, if we move to Queensland...

And it doesn't work out. Well, hey, we've gone on a great adventure as a family and, you know, we've created a whole new life for ourselves in Queensland. So we said to ourselves, what's the worst case scenario? And that was that we lived in a state that had beautiful weather and

and we had some friends who lived up there as well. So it was a calculated, if you like, to the point where there was no guarantee. There's no guarantees in life that your daughter's going to become a champion.

wildest dreams do we ever think we'd ever reach, Arnie would ever reach this particular level. But, you know, that was the situation. And then once we moved up and, you know, it was within about a year that, you know, she started to really improve and then made the Australian senior team. But then, you know, the move proved to be one that was enormously successful. But, you know, when you say, you know, was it a massive gamble? Was it a risk?

At the end of the day, we had a fallback situation of thinking that we'd traded a whole new life for our family. And as parents, Robert and I could sit back and say, well, we did what we signed up to do, and that was to give our children every opportunity. For Ariane's sister Mia, it's provided her with some great educational opportunities, and also she's now pursuing a career in the medical field.

and in areas that perhaps may not have been possible back in Tasmania. We're very happy you did it.

Not as happy as I am, I'll tell you. That's highly commendable, Steve, because I'm sure you sat down with your wife and your family and there would have been moments. It's only human when you have moments of doubt. But, you know, to give your children the opportunity that you have and to make that decision as a family, honestly, you should be very, very proud. Now, let's turn our mind to the 200 metre freestyle final. You've seen a lot of Molly O'Callaghan. Of course, you've seen almost every stroke that Ariane's ever put in a swimming pool. How's it going to go down?

Look, the big thing for us was that the big thing in swimming is when you're a 400-metre swimmer and you've swum a 400-metre heat, then a final, it's all about the recovery. How do you recover? Arnie came out in the 200-metre heats and she looked, I think, probably the best she looked in the pool after swimming a 400 the night before and came out in the 200 heat and swam pretty well, swam okay. And then last night in the semi-final,

Look, it was a really good swim by Arnie. She's looking great in the pool. And I think, look, there's any one of five girls can win this particular race tonight. And it gets down to the Olympic Games aren't about times. They're not about world records. They're not about Olympic records. They're about...

Who can pull it all together on the day and who can make it work? The thing that a lot of the media are writing up, and I suppose we look at it this way too, is that Arnie's got a steel-trapped mind, a very strong mind mentally. Molly's a swimmer who's very powerful off the wall. Look, I think what we're just hoping for is that we get an Australia 1-2, which would just be thrilling to see that happen. I know it's been many years since

I think before the two girls were even born, since Australia last had a one-two in this particular event. So, you know, how's it going to go? Look, it's going to be tough. It's going to be a, you know, it's going to be a fight right down to the wire. A fingernail will probably separate...

the two swimmers at the end of tonight, but it's going to be one where we've got, you know, two of the fastest swimmers ever in history, over 200 metres in Arnie and Molly, going head-to-head. And, look, at the end of the day, you know, whoever pulls it all together on the night is the one that...

that will take it out. And obviously, you know, we're a bit biased about who we'd like to, like to see win, but you know, we would just love to see a situation where we get those two Aussies up on the podium. And, uh, you know, that would be a, just a, an icing on the cake and just a fabulous result for, you know, not just, not just for, for our family and for Molly's family, but, um, also for, you know, for the country and for the swimming team and for these Paris Olympics. Well, Steve, uh,

I'm sure you've got a bit of a taste with it, with all your phone blowing up and all the rest of it, but Australia is right behind you guys. Right behind you guys. Yeah, absolutely. Look, and I tell you, Chris, one thing that I think humbled us enormously was after Arnie got her gold medal from the 400, the reception she received inside this extraordinary La Defense stadium

which is a rugby field which has been turned into an indoor pool with a drop-in pool. The reception she received from the crowd, you know, we were just in awe of thinking, wow, who would ever have thought that we could have such a reception for our daughter? You know, as Ian Thorpe, I think, summed it up, there's only two people in the world at the moment who don't love Arnie, and that's, you know, Katie Ledecky and Summer McIntosh at the moment. Yeah.

She's got enough friends, Steve. She doesn't need them. I know. And look, thank you to everybody. Thank you to you, Chris, and thank you to everybody back home in Australia for your extraordinary support. We're massively humbled by the whole thing. And these are really moments in your life that you pinch yourself and you think, you know, wow, who would ever have thought a decade ago that we'd be, you know, I'm now looking out on a beautiful blue sky across down towards the

one of the big archers here in Paris towards the La Defense Arena and thinking, you know, tonight we're back there on this world stage and we've got a daughter who's going to have a big old crack at another gold medal. Fire up, Steve. You're an incredible Australian and you're even a more incredible dad, I'll say, from one to another. Good luck with it all. Good on you, mate. Appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. That's Steve Titmuss, very proud father of Ariane Titmuss. What a showdown it'll be, hey?