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Commonwealth Games gold medallist Cody Simpson is returning to entertainment after a captivating four-year professional swimming career which led to him representing Australia.
After failing to make the Australian Olympic swimming team for the Paris Olympics, Simpson took to social media to tell his followers he could rest knowing he gave everything he had in the pool.
ABC Sport will be live blogging every day of the Paris Olympics from July 27 (Australian time).
Despite his Olympic dream coming to an end, Simpson did not say he was retiring from professional swimming.
"All you can do is everything you can to take what you've been given as far as you can take it," he wrote.
"You owe yourself the honour of cultivating your talents with as much fervour and intensity as you can.
"The privilege of becoming what you're capable of becoming.
"I left nothing to the unknown these past 4 years and I can now rest knowing I put my pedal to the floor every day and covered every other little detail to take this as far it could go and it sure went a hell of a ways."
The 27-year-old finish fifth in the 100-metre butterfly final at Australia's selection trials in Brisbane on Saturday night.
"It's bittersweet," Simpson told reporters after missing out on the team.
"But I did what I could do — and that's all you can do."
Simpson's mother Angie and father Brad both swam for Australia, at the 1987 Pan-Pacific Games and 1994 Commonwealth Games respectively.
Simpson was a promising junior swimmer and, aged 12, won two gold medals at the Queensland state championships in 2009.
That year, the singer-guitarist posted some songs on YouTube and was discovered by an American music manager. His family moved to Los Angeles in 2010 and fame followed.
But four years ago, Simpson could not ignore the itch to return to competitive swimming.
"Just to do right by that kid in me … I wanted to come in these last four years and just have a real good go," he said.
"To have the chance to be swimming for my country and make Australian teams and medal internationally … is just something that not a lot of swimmers get to achieve or get to experience.
"And I have had the privilege to do that and that's something that I'll never forget and that nobody will ever be able take away from me."
Simpson swam at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham and collected a gold medal as a heat swimmer in Australia's triumphant 4x100m freestyle relay.
"I feel really proud … to satisfy the fire that was inside me to compete and swim again and push myself in training," he said.
"The discipline and resilience and perseverance that swimming has again instilled in me is something that I'm really excited to implement in my future endeavours because it has just helped me grow so much.
"And how I can take that back into music and entertainment and see what I can do — there's some exciting projects lined up for after this that I was going to go back and do regardless of how this week went."
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