Michael Klim
Updated: Sep 6
The relay we all remember, the fight nobody saw coming, and a whole new purpose.
Some interviews are just work. This one was not. Michael Klim and I go back a long way, and sitting down with him was emotional for both of us. Most of us remember Klimi for one unforgettable night in the pool. Fewer know the fight he has been in since, and how he has met it.
Smashing it like guitars
We had to start where everyone starts. Sydney 2000, the 4x100 freestyle relay, and Klimi touching the wall and strumming the air guitar at the Americans. Gary Hall Junior had said the US would smash us like guitars. Twenty-six years on, Klimi does not see it as smashing anyone. That race made friendships. Gary Hall is now one of his best mates, and even gifted him a white Gibson Les Paul after the 1998 World Championships. Sport does that. It throws people together in the strangest ways.
The migrant kid who out-trained everyone
Klimi’s start is remarkable on its own. Poland, India, Germany, Canada, and finally Australia. A kid with a blonde undercut and an accent, sitting in an English as a second language class, who got his Aussie passport before his parents did. He found the water early, and then he found his coach, Gennadi. Cups of tea after training, and a willingness to try anything: straight-arm freestyle, dolphin kick, the innovations that are everywhere in the sport now. “If you choose something, don’t doubt yourself,” he told me. He was all in, every time.
The airport in Kuala Lumpur
Then his body, the tool that made him, began to fail. The moment it became real was Kuala Lumpur airport, when his legs gave way a few minutes into the walk. He sat down on the floor and bawled, alone, and reached for the phone to call Michelle. He has CIDP, a rare condition that attacks the lining of the nerves, and it moved fast. A walking stick, a handrail at home, stairs he could no longer manage. He even learned the diagnosis almost by accident, a doctor mentioning it in passing during a scan.
When your body is your identity
For a man who built a career, in his own words, on showing off his rig, this was the hardest part. So much of his identity had been tied to his physicality, and that was taken away. He does not dress it up. He tells you plainly how dark it got. And then he tells you what he did next.
A team of champions
Klimi found a new purpose. The Klim Foundation, which he leads with Michelle, is chasing two simple things: why CIDP happens, and a cure. He has become an ambassador for Lifeblood, because the treatment that keeps him stable comes from plasma that everyday Australians donate. When the Foundation launched, the who’s who of Australian sport turned up. I was there, and I have rarely seen a room like it. “It’s going to take a team of champions,” he says. His best swims were always the relays, so of course it would be.
Head in the water
He is busy again, the way he likes it. Klim Swim in Bali, a new skincare range, three kids, and a daughter he is being strong for after her own diagnosis. I asked him where he is happiest. “With my head in the water,” he said. Of course. This is a bloke who lost the thing that defined him and found something bigger.
I could not be prouder to call him a mate. Do yourself a favour and listen to this one.
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