"For me studying and swimming go hand in hand. I can't do one without the other.
"Being a member of the Australian swim team during a major swimming meet is electric. Each swimmer has individual goals and is striving for success, creating an environment that is highly driven.
"This was the case in Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games."
It's not often a full time student manages to secure a gold medal in his chosen sport, but Bachelor of Commerce student BENJAMIN TREFFERS did exactly that at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in July, winning gold in the 50-metre backstroke.
Take a tour behind the scenes in the latest edition of ANU Reporter, as Treffers explains how he balances studying and swimming.
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![ANU is home to Gadi, a high-performance supercomputer at the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) used by 7500+ researchers across the University and the country. The machine is named ‘Gadi’ [pronounced Gar-dee], a word of the Ngunnawal people meaning ‘to search for’.](https://d1zkbwgd2iyy9p.cloudfront.net/files/styles/anu_double_narrow_440x248/public/2026-08/resized20200311_DSC7629_GADI_supercomputer_NCI.jpg?itok=Zsq4v0BK)
