Australian Swimming Championships not about 'fun' for Cody Simpson 

Cody Simpson will show the world how serious he is about sport when he competes at the Australian Swimming Championships in Adelaide, 8-22 May.

In a TV advert for the event being shown on Prime Video in Australia, he says: ‘If people think I’m doing this for fun, they’re wrong.’

When the singer - who was a national age grade swimmer growing up - returned to the water in 2019 to try and qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic team, many wrote it off as a publicity stunt or to entertain a whim.

However, he proved his worth by making the 100 butterfly final at the Australian Olympic trials, where an eighth-place finish ultimately meant that he missed out on the team for Japan.

Showing true Olympic sprit, the Gold Coast native decided not to give up and adjusted his sights on qualification for the FINA 2022 Aquatics World Championships in Budapest 1 June - 23 July.

In truth, Simpson's dedication to swimming couldn't be questioned after he became a member of the University of Southern California’s Trojan Swim Elite team before the Games in Tokyo.

‘I was happy with my result,’ he told Hello magazine of his performance at the Olympic Trials.

‘It was my goal to hit 52 seconds for the 100-metre butterfly and make the final.

He also admitted that he didn’t think he’d be ‘remotely competitive until at least next year at the earliest’ and therefore exceeded his own expectations.

Simpson also has the expertise of swimming GOAT Michael Phelps to call upon in his Olympic pursuit.

"He's kind of turned into somewhat of a mentor, which is, you know, beyond anything I could have dreamed of as a kid growing up," Simpson said, per Afternoon Sport.

"I had him as my computer screen saver, you know, his butterfly in Beijing, I was 11. And I think that when the Beijing Olympics were out there and that was like my first year, I was at my first national championships and stuff like that. And so he was and is that figure to me in sports and it's pretty awesome that I can kind of just text with him."

Kyle Chalmers will surprisingly be competing at the Aussie Championships in Simpson’s butterfly sprints.

However, the Rio 2016 freestyle Olympic champion will sit out the World Champs in order to focus on the Commonwealth Games later this summer in Birmingham, UK.

Simpson recently released a new single named Nice To Meet You, and he’ll be hoping to introduce a new, improved version of himself in Adelaide.

The global star, who boasts 4.3 million Instagram followers, has been training in the pool nine times per week up to two hours a day while doing three intense weight sessions for 90 minutes each.

Beyond making the Worlds team this summer, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games remain his ultimate goal.