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After winning the 200 metre freestyle at the Australian Swimming Trials, and booking his spot at the Paris Olympic Games, Max Giuliani admits that things could have been very different.
The 20-year-old Tasmanian was, in his own words "very, very close" to giving up a life of hardship in the pool to become a tradie.
"All my mates back home are all tradesmen," Giuliani said.
"I suppose you are what you surround yourself with and that's what I was going to do.
"Give up swimming and go and do that and have an easy life."
His tradie mates might take umbrage at the suggestion they have an easy life — although hearing that he "slaughtered himself" every day might suggest otherwise.
"I've probably had three months this year where I was just a zombie from breaking my body every day."
Regardless, fate intervened, and Giuliani swapped the frigid mornings in Tasmania for the Sunshine state.
"I used to have to defrost the window of my car, for probably four months of the year," Giuliani said.
"There's no more of that. No more minus temperatures.
The change, when it did come, was almost forced upon him.
"Paul, my coach, moved to Miami and I moved up after meeting [Miami head coach] Rich [Scarce] once," Giuliani said.
"I was always pretty positive that I would stay in Tassie, but Paul moving kinda chucked me in at the deep end.
"If he [Paul] hadn't moved, I'd still be there to this day and I wouldn't be where I am today.
"I'm very grateful."
The move has clearly paid off, with Giuliani making his first Olympic team as the only automatic qualifier in the men's 200m freestyle.
"Huge drops, I've dropped like six seconds since going to Rich, and as a 20-year-old that's massive," Giuliani said.
Those gains came at a cost though.
Initially, Giuliani said he struggled with being away from home for the first time.
"I'm a very friendship-focused guy, so I was swimming with my mates every night, I was on the phone to them every day and then I came up here [to Queensland] and didn't have anything," he said.
"That just shook me."
He credits connecting with some of the other swimmers in Queensland's Gold Coast as being one of the reasons he stuck with it.
Giuliani had burst onto the scene in 2023 by becoming the second-fastest Australian of all time to swim the 200m free — trailing only Ian Thorpe's record — in the first leg of a 4x200m relay at the Queensland state championships.
Although admitting that he was "super, super nervous" heading into the race, Giuliani said there was no extra pressure on his swim, despite qualifying fastest.
"I think I have always had that kind of underlying resilience," he said.
"I've been working for psych and working with Rich and that's really built now.
"I back myself as being one of the toughest blokes in that field and I know that I want it the most and I'm willing to do anything to get the job done and that's what you saw tonight.
"It's all heart."
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