A beer emoji and a mystery injury: Dolphins boss addresses Cooper drinking incident

Irvine: Several days after skipping the final night of swimming at the Commonwealth Games to go out drinking instead of supporting his Australian teammates and attending a mandatory team meeting, Isaac Cooper posted a photo to Instagram with a beer emoji in the caption that raised eyebrows.

“Cheers Glasgow 🍻,” Cooper wrote to his 41,000 Instagram followers. “It was real. Onto the next.”

Within hours, Cooper – who this masthead can reveal split with his coach, Olympian Ash Delaney, on the eve of the Commonwealth Games – had deleted the beer emoji.

Cooper changed the caption from “Cheers Glasgow” to “Peace out Glasgow”.

One user noted in the comments that it was a “wild caption”. Cooper liked that comment.

For an athlete who, only a few weeks earlier, had told this masthead how proud he was to have been appointed to the Dolphins’ leadership group, Cooper’s post spoke volumes.

Australia head coach Rohan Taylor, who declined to be interviewed in the days after this masthead revealed the incident in Glasgow, was asked at a Pan Pacific Championships press conference in Irvine, California, on Tuesday whether he was surprised by Cooper’s social media post featuring a beer emoji.

Taylor offered no opinion. “I don’t have social media, so I didn’t see it,” he said. “I heard about it but I didn’t see it.”

On the day Cooper went missing in Glasgow, having been spotted drinking at the bar at Australian team headquarters, Taylor was furious the 22-year-old backstroker was not at the pool supporting his teammates.

In the days that followed, satirical website The Betoota Advocate published a story under the headline: “God Forbid A Queenslander Goes To A Pub While On Tour”.

Cooper decided to reshare the post on Instagram, not that Taylor would have known.

Swimming great and fellow Queenslander Kaylee McKeown, who did not compete at the Commonwealth Games, liked the Advocate’s post. In the comments section, Louisa Forrester, the mother of Australian swimmer Jenna Forrester, wrote: “What a dumb and ignorant article”.

Pinning down a timeline of the Cooper incident in Scotland has been difficult, with Swimming Australia not forthcoming with information relating to Cooper’s mishap.

Taylor could have sent Cooper home to make a statement about the standards expected within the team. He chose not to.

Taylor could have also been proactive and taken away Cooper’s leadership role. Instead, that was Cooper’s own doing, according to Swimming Australia.

Meanwhile, no details have been given about Cooper’s explanation when he sat down with team officials to account for his failure to not show up at the pool.

This is an athlete who, four years ago, was sent home by Taylor from a training camp ahead of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham for the misuse of prescription medication, including giving sleeping pills to teammates. Cooper said last month he believed he was harshly treated then.

Swimming Australia’s statement on August 3, released in the hours after the closing ceremony, read: “Isaac did not attend the final night of the swimming competition or final team meeting in Glasgow which is in conflict with team expectations. Isaac has since voluntarily stood down from the team’s athlete leadership group. Swimming Australia will not be making any further comment.”

Taylor was equally coy on the eve of Pan Pacs, which begin on Wednesday (Thursday AEST). He was asked to provide a timeline and, in particular, why Cooper had decided to pull out of his 100m backstroke final – an event held on the final night of competition when he was out drinking.

“The night before [July 28], both he and [breaststroker] Sienna Toohey wanted to pull out of their [individual] events the next day to save themselves for the relay,” Taylor said. “Sienna had to do the heats in the morning and Isaac was doing the heat. So they pulled out for that purpose.”

However, that explanation contradicts a post on Cooper’s official Facebook page, which claimed he did not race the 100m backstroke final because of a back injury.

It is unclear who has been posting to the page on Cooper’s behalf, but it links to his official website and lists contact details for his management team, who were approached for comment.

“Isaac has made the difficult decision to withdraw from tomorrow’s 100m backstroke final at the Commonwealth Games,” the post read.

“Following further assessment by the Australian team doctor, Isaac has been diagnosed with a spine fracture. While this is not drastic it will require some treatment before Pan Pacs, so Isaac chose to swim in the men’s 4x100m medley relay heats tonight.”

Asked about the back injury and whether he was aware of it, Taylor did not confirm its existence.

“All I know is he’d come to me and spoke to me about saving himself for the medley relay,” Taylor said.

So, was Cooper really nursing a spine fracture significant enough to withdraw from an individual Commonwealth Games final? He was eighth fastest into the 100m backstroke final and long odds to win it.

There are also differences between Cooper and Toohey’s situations. Cooper had qualified for the 100m backstroke final on the penultimate night of racing, whereas Toohey still needed to swim a 200m breaststroke heat on the morning of the final day as well as fulfil her duties in the women’s 4x100m medley relay.

Meanwhile, the notion of Cooper “saving” himself for a 4x100m medley relay heat is perplexing given Australia’s heat time of 3:34.67 – Cooper was the lead-off swimmer – was almost 10 seconds faster than eighth-fastest qualifier Namibia. Australia was not going to miss the final.

With backstroker Henry Allan then selected to swim the men’s medley relay final later that evening, Cooper could have still contested the 100m backstroke final but was nowhere to be seen.

Taylor was also asked for clarity on Swimming Australia’s statement that Cooper had voluntarily stood down from the leadership group.

“The conversations I’ve had with Isaac are between Isaac and I,” Taylor said. “At the end of the day, we’re here and excited to be in Irvine and focused on Pan Pacs and building on that. He’s here to race.”

Was Taylor disappointed Cooper had been out drinking?

“We want our team to be united and together,” Taylor said. “And so anytime [something] like that happens, it’s always something we have to address. We did and we moved on.”

On the subject of Cooper no longer being coached by Delaney, Taylor said: “That was something that happened after trials. They worked together until he left to come [overseas]. I’ve been talking to him [Cooper] and working on where he might end up and where he wants to train after this. That’s something we’ll work on once we get home.”

Splitting with a coach on the eve of a major event is unusual. Delaney did not travel to Glasgow or Irvine because he was not selected by Swimming Australia as part of the Dolphins’ coaching staff.

Brazilian Olympic bronze medallist Bruno Fratus also weighed in on X.

“Isaac is so talented and [has] a very bright future in front of him if he gets his head in the right place. And it [is] absolutely unacceptable to behave like this while on a team,” Fratus wrote. “But that being said … do athletes even get paid to perform such leadership roles?”

Cooper is yet to publicly explain what happened in Glasgow. Requests through Swimming Australia’s media department to interview him over the past week have been unsuccessful. He races on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) in the men’s 50m butterfly.

For now, all there is to go on are his interactions on social media.

“I’m loving being in the US and taking in every minute,” Cooper wrote on Instagram. “Keen to race again.”

“I made it [to Irvine] … who’d have thunk.”

One of Cooper’s followers commented on his latest post: “This calls for a celebratory beer”.

Cooper responded: “I agree”.

For the Dolphins’ sake, hopefully those beers can wait until after Irvine.