Glamour couple splits :Australian Olympic swimming star Stephanie Rice stretches during the second day training camp at Bukit Jalil Sports Complex on Wednesday.
The Australian swimming team is in Malaysia for a final week-long training. Photo: AFPAustralian swimming's glamour couple, Stepha-nie Rice and Eamon Sullivan, have split up just before the Olym-pic Games but insist their preparations have not been affected.
Sullivan is the 50m freestyle world record holder and Rice set world marks in the 200m and 400m individual medley earlier this year, although the latter has since been eclipsed.Both are considered hot medal contenders in Beijing.
"It was a mutual decision. We decided to take a break to allow us to focus entirely on the Olympics," Sullivan said Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur where the Australian team are training and acclimatising.
"If it was going to distract us in any way then we wouldn't have made that decision. We're still friends and I don't regret anything that I have done over the past two years."He added that no one else was involved.Asked if they would resume the relationship after the Games, he said: "You never know what the future holds but we are not thinking about that at the moment."Rice, 20, and Sullivan, 22, were hailed as Australia's sporting power couple in the lead up to the Olympics, with marketing experts predicting a successful Games would lead to millions of dollars in sponsorships.
Party photos of the pair -- showing Rice in a series of raunchy poses -- helped build their image and they were back on Australia's front pages this month promoting a new underwear brand.Despite the love split, which was announced on their Facebook pages, Australian head coach Alan Thompson insisted Wednesday both were professional enough to maintain their focus and denied it had affected the rest of the team.
"It doesn't concern anyone else in the team, it's not a nasty break-up, it's a mutual decision between two kids," he said."I haven't spoken to them about it much because I don't think it is my business unless it disrupts the team and it hasn't done that.
"Thompson added that romances and break-ups were natural on swim teams where many competitors are teenagers or in their early 20s. But he said there was no strategy in place such as counselling.
"We've got used to having teenagers in the team, and those who are married with kids," he said."There are no rule books for dealing with things like this. We're lucky that they are such professional athletes and mature young people who deal with it."
Retired Australian swimming great Ian Thorpe said the break was "bad timing" but also believed the pair would remain focused on winning gold in Beijing."
It's one of those situations where you feel sorry for them but they're both professionals ...hopefully they'll stick to the task at hand," he told Channel Nine television in Australia.
