By Andre Slade – Owner, Ocean Swims and OceanFit

Most of us probably don’t think of ourselves as open water racers.

We’re ocean swimmers. We meet mates at the beach, swim around a headland, enter a few events over summer and, every now and then, get a little more competitive than we care to admit when someone our age appears beside us in the finishing chute.

But there’s another end of our sport. The pointy end. And right now, an Australian is absolutely owning it.

Moesha Johnson has been untouchable in 2026, sweeping the World Aquatics Open Water Swimming World Cup and establishing herself as the leading female open water swimmer in the world. After that extraordinary campaign, Suzie Ryan caught up with Moesha to get her take on how it all came together, what clicked this season and what sits behind such a dominant run of form.

Then overnight she added another huge result, winning the 10km at the Pan Pacific Championships in California and becoming Australia’s first Pan Pacs open water gold medallist.

There were strong performances from the rest of the Australian team too, with Jacqueline Davison-McGovern finishing fifth in the women’s 10km and Nick Sloman spending plenty of time near the front of the men’s race before finishing ninth.

For a country that loves swimming, beaches and open water, it feels like something we should be making a bit more noise about.

Which is why another story circulating around the sport at the moment has caught my attention.

Open water swimming is reportedly among the sports under threat as the Olympic program is reviewed ahead of Brisbane 2032.

There’s a certain irony in that for Australia too. Tasmanian Chris Guesdon was one of the key people behind getting the 10km marathon swim onto the Olympic program in the first place, helping shape the event before it debuted at Beijing in 2008.

Now, less than 25 years later, we could be hosting an Olympics where it isn’t there at all.

Nothing has been formally cut, but Moesha and others are already speaking publicly about why the sport deserves to stay. And I hope they succeed.

Not simply because Australia currently has one of the best open water swimmers in the world, but because I think the elite and recreational versions of our sport are more closely connected than they sometimes appear.

Watch a 10km marathon race, and there’s plenty we recognise. Drafting feet. Picking lines. Navigating buoys. Dealing with chop. Trying to hang onto a pack when the pace suddenly lifts.

It’s our sport, just played at its highest level.

And that top end gives the broader sport visibility. It inspires younger swimmers, creates pathways and helps keep open water swimming in front of people who may one day discover that you don’t need to be an Olympian to fall in love with it.

Perhaps that’s what would feel so strange about losing it from Brisbane.

Because when I picture what an Australian version of Olympic open water swimming could look like, I don’t picture a flat, protected course tucked away somewhere. I picture the ocean. Swell, chop and maybe even a little surf thrown in for good measure.

I can imagine it off Snapper Rocks or Burleigh Heads, sitting alongside the surfing and sharing the same event infrastructure. It feels almost made for a Queensland Olympics, and a chance to show the world open water swimming in a way that feels unmistakably Australian.

Because that’s really the beauty of this sport. Swimming doesn’t have to happen between two black lines. It can happen in oceans, rivers, lakes and harbours, shaped by the conditions and the place itself.

It can be fiercely competitive, social, adventurous or simply an excuse to meet your mates at the beach before sunrise.

There’s room for all of it.

And I’d like to think there’ll still be room for it at Brisbane 2032 too.