Swimming
Failing to qualify for Tokyo 2020 saw Moesha Johnson turn her focus from the pool to open water swimming – a move that led to Olympic silver and now two individual world titles. By Linda Pearce.
World champion swimmer Moesha Johnson goes the distance
Her goggles full of water after a knock at the final turn, Moesha Johnson had to follow the splash to a finish line she could not see. After being pounded by elbows to the ribs and hips she’d hit a lactate “wall”, and would emerge from the soupy waters off Sentosa Island with bruises all over and a soon-to-be-black left eye.
Swimming as a combat sport?
“I explained it as a little bit like a gladiator event. It was absolute chaos,” says the Queensland marathoner of her bronze medal legacy from the new 3km knockout sprint. The event was actually three elimination races in quick succession over 1500, 1000 and 500 metres, and followed her 10km and 5km golden open water double at this month’s World Aquatics Championships in Singapore.
“Hope it was great ‘spectatorship’, but it was absolutely crazy for us.”
That was part one, as Johnson’s individual exploits headlined Australia’s best collective result in challenging conditions that were described by head coach Fernando Possenti as the toughest at a major meet in at least five years.
“It just adds a little bit more in terms of how brilliant she was to recover from one day to another and compete at the same level,” Possenti says.
“I think the team starts looking to her and understanding that they are capable as well to look for the future and try to achieve the same kind of results that she is.”
For her brave encore this week, the 27-year-old hopes to push towards podium finishes in the 800m and 1500m freestyle events in the far more controlled environment of the pool.
No flying limbs there. No overheated air and water. No tricky currents, no floating rubbish or sea creatures. No thoughts like those she says surfaced in the latest race: What the hell am I doing getting beaten up in the water?
Which must make the prospect of the pool almost a little sterile. “Yes, you have your own lane, but [there’s] an amazing atmosphere, an amazing crowd,” Johnson says. “It’s a completely different competition. Both are so exciting for me and I’m just trying to enjoy both of them for what they bring.”
Recovery will be crucial before she dives in the pool at Singapore’s new World Aquatics Championships Arena on Monday for her heat of the 1500m freestyle. This race will be just eight days after her fifth place for Australia’s defending champions in the mixed 4 x 1500m relay. It’s a longer-than-normal break between open water and pool events but a tough turnaround nonetheless.
“It’s a complete flip. I’ve got a few days to reset and then come together with the pool team and integrate myself back in and get excited to race again,” she says.
“I just hope to bring the same energy, and hope that what we’ve done last week has brought a lot of momentum and made the pool team excited to carry it on.”
A gruelling stretch started with the 10km marathon, over the Olympic distance in which Johnson won a silver medal in Paris last year. The race was pushed back 36 hours due to dual postponements and with the water temperature topping 30 degrees.
“Two times we woke up to race and two times it was postponed. And that’s a really hard thing to handle,” she says.
“So we had ocean currents, temperature, schedule delays – I think in total that is the maximum that any open water swimmer is going to have to deal with.”
Eventually staged in the hottest-ever water for a World Aquatics Championships event, there was a flirtation with the cancellation threshold of 31 degrees before Johnson defeated Italian Ginevra Taddeucci by 4.4 seconds in 2:07:51.3 to claim Australia’s first ever world title in the event. Two days later, the Gold Coaster repeated the result by a super-skinny margin in the 5k.
“It’s hard to explain what the heat does to you, but it raises your heart rate, it just saps your muscles,” she says.
“If you think of sitting in a sauna and you want to get out… well you’re swimming with your head under water. So my max heart rate in all my races was at least a whole zone above what it normally is and I was in the red zone, as we call it, for most of the race.”
We all know Australia’s superstar swimmers from the 2024 Paris Olympics. McKeown, Titmus, McEvoy, O’Callaghan, Chalmers, McKeon, et al. While Moesha Johnson considers it an overstatement to describe open water swimming as a “poor relation” of its pool cousin, there’s no doubt the profiles of marathoners are far lower.
Johnson had been predominantly a pool swimmer until she missed selection for the Tokyo Olympics and decided to strive for success in non-chlorinated waters. Now she’s an Olympic finalist in both disciplines. Last August, having finished sixth in the 1500m (pool), Johnson went on to claim a historic silver medal over 10km in the Seine river, which only weeks ago was reopened to recreational dippers after a century-long ban due to health concerns.
“[That] really solidified that I wasn’t crazy to dream,” she says. “Just in terms of day-to-day life it hasn’t changed things a lot, but I think I just carry myself with a little bit more confidence knowing that I’ve achieved something incredible and I’ve got nothing to lose now.
“My life hasn’t been turned upside down or anything like that. But it is special having that medal and being able to give back to a sport from that kind of level now and giving back to younger kids and allowing them to dream of not just swimming in a pool but swimming in a River Seine or swimming in the Red Sea in Egypt and places like that. So maybe it’s given someone a new dream.”
Being a “FIFO” athlete based partly in Germany – where Johnson trains at SC Magdeburg under coach Bernd Berkhahn and alongside dual Olympic champion Sharon van Rouwendaal – has broadened her experience and exposure to international programs through racing regularly at World Cup and other meets.
A biomedical science graduate, leader and mentor passionate about health, community and empowering young women, Johnson is also an environmental advocate and conservationist proud to be educating European rivals about coral-safe sunscreens and supporting the introduction by World Aquatics of biodegradable drink bottles for races.
“When we travel the world we’re always trying to pick up rubbish at the beaches we stay at and leave a positive impact; because our sport’s in the ocean and we are going to these amazing places we can utilise and leverage our positions to change and impact the local communities and the environment for better.”
A playlist of Aussie classics entitled “Homesick” – including Jimmy Barnes and GANGgajang’s ode to sitting on patios and the humidity that’s breathed – is part of the pre-race routine for a swimmer whose first name translates to “drawn from the water” in Hebrew.
“It just fits me so perfectly and it’s a name that I’m really proud of and I own it,” says Moe, as she is widely known. “My auntie and uncle owned a swim centre [at Burleigh Heads] and my mum worked there, so I grew up doing swim lessons; Mum put me in every single swim lesson possible, and I swam all day while they were working, and I just loved it.
“Mum always said even in the middle of winter, if we parked up at a beach, I was jumping out of the car running to the water to have a swim. So I think it’s always just been in my nature that I’ve been attracted to water.”
The myriad variables of ocean swimming are what makes it so addictive, according to Johnson, who agrees that long-distance athletes are a special breed.
“The highs are higher and the lows are lower. When you go through two hours of swimming, you go through so much in the race that when you hit that wall there’s so much more emotion and the race is so much less predictable, so the wins feel so much bigger,” she says. “To be able to do the sport we do, you have to be able to take anything in your stride. There’s so many unexpected [elements] and if you can’t handle changes and if you can’t handle things not going your way, then I don’t think the sport’s probably going to be the easiest for you.”
Moesha Johnson seems to be able to handle more than most.
Martin McKenzie-Murray is on leave.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on July 26, 2025 as "Going the distance".
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