An Olympic gold medal-winning swimmer has described male coaches blasting female athletes for gaining weight and making them eat from small plates

• An Olympic gold medalist said the team's male coaches were obsessed with the weight of female athletes.
• Cate Campbell, who won four golds for Australia, said the mindset of male coaches was "the skinnier the better."

An Olympic gold medal-winning has said male coaches are obsessed with the weight of female athletes and that they were told to use smaller plates when eating.

Cate Campbell is an Australian swimmer who has won four Olympic gold medals, including two at Tokyo 2020, spoke about experiencing body shaming while an elite swimmer in a book about her career set to be released in the coming weeks.

In an extract from her new book, "Sister Secrets: Life Lessons from the Pool to the Podium," which will be published in Australian newspaper the Daily Telegraph, Campbell wrote that male coaches often said of female athletes that "the skinnier the better."

"Weight was, and still is, always a topic of conversation on pool decks or in swim teams," she said.

In one example that occurred during a competition, Campbell writes that: "All the girls were specifically told to use smaller plates at dinner so we wouldn't overeat."

"Swimmers in other programs were subjected to weekly weigh-ins - in front of their entire squads - and publicly admonished if they had gained even a few hundred grams.

"The general consensus from most other male coaches was: the skinnier the better.

"Some of this mindset had begun to rub off on me."

In October, Campbell posted on Instagram revealing she had been diagnosed with depression.

"In July 2020 I was diagnosed with depression, in June 2021 - four weeks before the start of the Tokyo Olympics, I finally admitted I needed some medical help, and I am so grateful I did," she wrote.

"Mental health is not a sign of weakness. It does not discriminate. It is very real, and most of us will face it at some point in our lives."

A post shared by Cate Campbell (@cate_campbell)

In response, Jodie Hawkins of Swimming Australia said the team will work towards "developing better ways of coaching."

"We continue to work with our network of coaches and athlete leaders on developing better ways of coaching and communicating with our athletes to enable them to perform at the highest level," she said, as reported by the Guardian.