At a glance…
- Ahead of the 2026 Commonwealth Games, Olympic gold medallist Giaan Rooney reflects on returning to the event that shaped her career — this time from the commentary box — and the perspective she’s gained in the 20 years since retiring from elite swimming.
- Giaan opens up about swapping the swimming pool for a macadamia farm in regional New South Wales.
- Giaan shares why she has “never regretted” leaving city life behind.
My name is a constant trip-up for Australians, but it turns out it’s something I have in common with Olympian, mum, sports reporter, and now macadamia farmer Giaan Rooney.
“There’s no interesting heritage with my name,” she tells me as we speak on the phone ahead of the 2026 Commonwealth Games. “I’ve just got two very Australian parents who were Jan and Bruce and decided they were going to have children with unusual names.”
Five years ago, Giaan and her husband Matt traded the Gold Coast for a working macadamia farm in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales.
It was a move that began as a dream for a country weekender and became something much bigger: a new life, a new community and, ultimately, a new definition of what it means to be successful.
“If you never told me that I would want to be a farmer, I never would have ever thought that that was probably in my future,” Giaan says of the move.
“I certainly married the farmer. So my husband, who for nearly 15 years is the country boy and grew up on a farm, and all his family are farming families. And so we had always dreamed of being a part of it in one way, shape or form.”
The family stumbled across a macadamia farm almost by chance, but Giaan says it quickly felt like fate.
“We’re five and a half years in now, and I couldn’t imagine going back to living in a city. We absolutely love it.”
Life on the land, however, has taught the former elite athlete a lesson she never expected. In sport, she’d always believed hard work would be rewarded. Farming doesn’t always work that way.
“It’s the one equation that I’ve always lived by, which was hard work and passion equals success, because as farmers and throughout the farming community across Australia and the world, it doesn’t matter sometimes how hard you work, how passionate you are, how innovative you are, sometimes there are things that are just completely out of your control, i.e. Mother Nature, commodity prices, conflicts overseas, all of those things come into play that are completely out of your control.”
Despite floods, fluctuating commodity prices and the many challenges that come with farming, she says the rewards have outweighed the hardships.
“We’re certainly in a lucky position now where that hard work has kind of paid off, and we’re at the point of actually making some money off the farm. So that serves a lot of purposes, but ultimately it’s a wonderful lifestyle for us.”
That lifestyle has also given Giaan something she never expected after a career spent chasing medals: perspective.
Looking back, she says the definition of success that drove her as a teenager isn’t the one she holds onto today.
“Absolutely. And I would also probably say that anyone who is 44 this year, anyone who gets to their 40s and probably hasn’t changed their definition of success, hasn’t properly understood what life is all about either.”
“For me, exactly as you said, my teenage years and my 20s were very much a very insular, selfish version of success, of what I deemed to be successful and to the point of winning. And that’s all that I was focused on.”
Today, it’s the quieter moments that matter most.
“Ultimately now my version of success is a happy family life and enough income that allows us to eat really healthy food and have a wonderful work-life balance and ultimately a connection with nature that means that we are healthy and thriving in more ways than one.”
“It’s become a much smaller version of what I used to think success meant.”
Living in regional Australia has also given her a deeper appreciation for the resilience of farming communities and strengthened her desire to bridge the gap between city and country.
“I just feel incredibly grateful that I work in the cities, I live in the country, and I often try to be a bit of a conduit between the two and highlight the challenges of those that live in the region and just the difference of how we can support our farmers and our farming communities and our country communities as much as we possibly can.”
“I love the fact that we’re becoming better at supporting our rural families and communities. But yes, I still think we can do better.”
It’s also changed the childhood she and Matt are creating for their two children.
When the family first bought the farm, they intended to split their time between the Gold Coast and the Northern Rivers. But every Sunday night, nobody wanted to leave.
“We had such a fabulous little community and felt right from the get-go that then when the neighbouring farm came up for sale, we saw it as the universe sending us signs that we were meant to be here full time.”
Even after devastating floods swept through the region and macadamia prices plummeted, Giaan says they never questioned the decision.
“We still never regretted the move for a second.”
“And that has a lot to do with the freedom, the lifestyle, the connection to nature that we have, but also our little community that we are so almost enveloped around or with, where we all support each other and we just love it.”
Ahead of this year’s Commonwealth Games, Giaan celebrated the 20th anniversary of her own retirement.
For someone who spent decades chasing the next race, the next medal and the next achievement, perhaps the biggest lesson has been learning to appreciate what’s already in front of her.
As she heads into reporting on this year’s slate of athletes, we speak about her first Commonwealth Games – when she was just 15-years of age. This year, it almost feels full-circle.
“I never really stopped and took it all in,” she tells me about that time. Reflecting on the advice she’d give her 15-year-old self before her first Commonwealth Games, Giaan says she wishes she’d slowed down enough to celebrate the wins along the way.
“I don’t think you ever properly celebrate your wins because it’s almost like this addictive feeling of I want to feel that again, and so that means getting straight back into the mindset of training.”
Now, she believes happiness is found in something much simpler.
“We need to take stock of the small moments. We need to have gratitude for the small things, the good things that happen, not just when we have big wins, but every day.”
“There are so many challenges every day. If we only concentrate on the challenges, we don’t have much sense of finding happiness in the small things.”
“So we really need to celebrate the small wins and be grateful for the small things. And I think that really does add up over time.”
Follow our Commonwealth Games coverage here and watch the Games on Channel Seven and 7Plus.
