WA Sports Star Finalists: Open water swimmer Kyle Lee believes he raises his game in challenging conditions

The very best athletes raise their game when conditions are at their toughest — and SportWest 2025 Sport Star Award nominee Kyle Lee did exactly that in his crowning achievement of a brilliant year. The Australind-raised swimmer had to confront water temperartures nudging above 30C off the shores of Singapore’s Sentosa Island for the 10km open water event at July’s 2025 World Aquatics Championships. In the best performance so far of his budding career, the 23-year-old held enough in reserve to storm home and beat Germany’s Oliver Klemet to the bronze medal by 10-hundredths of a second. Lee, who is also an accomplished pool performer, told The West Australian he relished the unpredictable nature of his main discipline. “When I heard it was going to be a tough swim like that, it probably made me a bit more excited, knowing it would play to my strengths a bit more,” Lee said. “They were very tough conditions but everyone being in the same boat, competing in the same water, meant it was a very level playing field. “Going into the event, we tried to prepare for the heat as much as we could. We used the sauna and we had a training camp in Darwin to get as used as we could to those conditions.” Lee said standing on the podium alongside a pair of open water swimming legends in Florian Wellbrock and Gregorio Paltrinieri — who both boast Olympic gold medals to go with a combined 20 World Championships event wins — was “extremely special”. “To come away with that result was really, really pleasing,” he said. “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Growing up, I always dreamed about competing against some of those athletes. To be competing against them was such a special feeling.” Lee’s year started with a dominant showing at the Australian Open Water Swimming Championships, where he won both the men’s 10km and 5km open events and was part of a winning mixed 4x1.25km relay team. The championships were held in Busselton, only kilometres from where he grew up just outside of Bunbury, and he said he was stoked to have a national-level event staged inside his home region. “It just means that I have a lot more friends and family come down for the event,” Lee said. “Seeing all the people that have supported me along my journey and helped me to achieve the things that I have, it just makes the event a lot more special.” After starting 2026 with another dominant display at the Australian Open Water Swimming Championships further up the coast in Bunbury, Lee has now set his sights on qualifying for October’s Pan Pacific Games. Open water swimming events at the Games will be held off California’s Long Beach — the very same location where they are slated to take place at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Lee, whose Olympic debut in the much-discussed River Seine in 2024 produced a 13th-placed 10km marathon swim finish, said he had not quite fully focused his attention on another Olympic campaign, but the Pan Pacific Games would present perfect preparation. “Gaining that experience there is going to be so important,” he said. “The Olympics is such a different event to anything else I’ve done. If I can use that experience to try and get a good result, that would be incredibly rewarding.”