Grant Hackett will step off the cliff when he moves out of the safe surroundings of Denis Cotterell’s Gold Coast training program for the first time in 20 years, after next month’s world championships in Melbourne.Will the world’s best distance swimmer soar or plunge when he joins sprinters Matt Welsh and Michael Klim in Melbourne coach Ian Pope’s stable?

As Tracey Menzies discovered when she took over Ian Thorpe’s program two years before the Athens Olympics, the nation feels invested in the fortunes of an athlete of such stature.

There will be enormous pressure on Hackett and Pope to get it right in Beijing, where Hackett will try to become the first man to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the 1500m.

“It will be very hard for him (Hackett), but if anyone can do it, Grant Hackett can do it,” Australia’s best-known swimming coach Don Talbot said.

Talbot worries that the swimmer will be leaving behind all the support systems that have underpinned his international career.

Hackett freely acknowledged the risk when he announced his decision this week, but said he felt compelled to take it because he felt stale in his long-established routine.

“Maybe I could still win if I stayed here, but I know I wouldn’t get the best out of myself,” Hackett said. “That is going to take a change and something different.”

To Hackett, the greater risk was to stay in his comfort zone because he was afraid to venture into the unknown. It is the continual fearless striving for excellence that has made him the champion he is.

And if he needs support for his decision he need look no further than four of Australia’s most decorated swimmers of the past decade, all of whom switched coaches after they were established international performers, and went on to greater glory.

In 1994, Susie O’Neill was an Olympic and world championships bronze medallist when she left her childhood coach Bernie Wakefield to work with Scott Volkers, who took her to Olympic gold medals in 1996 and 2000.

O’Neill’s great rival Petria Thomas won medals at three successive Olympic Games with three different coaches: Bill Nelson in 1996, Mark Regan in 2000 and Glenn Beringen in 2004, when she crowned her career with three gold medals in Athens.

Thorpe, with Menzies, won the 200m freestyle gold medal in Athens that had alluded him with Doug Frost in Sydney. He also won his second 400m gold medal and his first Olympic medal in the 100m. But he never broke the world records he set with Frost.

Leisel Jones has broken nothing but records since moving from her childhood coach Ken Wood in late 2004 to Stephan Widmer, who guided her to her first individual world titles.

There are others that portray the flipside of such a dramatic shift. Hayley Lewis, Glenn Housman and Michael Klim (who was beset by injuries) never rediscovered the magic after leaving the coaches who took them to the top.

National head coach Alan Thompson believes the circumstances under which an athlete leaves a coach have a significant effect on the chances of success with a new coach.

“Sometimes athletes move because they are disgruntled and not performing well,” Thompson explained. “Other times it’s because of circumstance, the desire to live somewhere else, or for variety, or they think there are other things that can help them go faster.

“I think often you see a swimmer move when they are not swimming well and they blame the coach when there may be other reasons.

“I find that’s the person who doesn’t continue to improve.

“In most of these (successful) situations, the athlete was successful when they left, so they weren’t leaving for disgruntlement. They were moving to where they thought they could achieve more.”

Thompson is comfortable with Hackett’s decision, despite it coming just 18 months before the Olympics.

“The advantage of this move is that Grant spent last winter with Popey, so he’s not going to someone who’s unknown,” he explained. “That will help him to slot in much quicker.”

There is risk not only for the athlete but for the new coach. For Pope, this is arguably a no-win situation. If Hackett succeeds, he was already great, and if he fails, Pope is likely to cop the blame.

As Beringen, the coach who took on Thomas 18 months before the Athens Games, noted: “It’s fraught with danger. You are on a hiding to nothing if they don’t go faster. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, but it’s a good dilemma to have if you are a coach.”

Beringen believes that any coach worth his or her stopwatch would jump at the chance to work with an athlete of Hackett’s calibre, regardless of the risk to reputation.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity to work with someone who’s a proven performer at international level and it’s a coaching challenge to see if you can get them to go faster,” he said.

From his experience with Thomas, Beringen said good communication was the key to good performance.

“You don’t have time to work against each other and they are adults and usually reasonably intelligent athletes, so they have to buy into your coaching philosophy,” he said. “It becomes more a partnership.”

Pope accepts there will be equal pressure on him and Hackett to make this arrangement work.

“The pressure will be on to get him to go faster, but the biggest thing for Grant is that it’s a new stimulus, a new environment, a different group of people,” Pope said.

He will not be too proud to call on Cotterell’s expertise as one of the world’s foremost distance coaches, and one of his friends.

“You have to look at what has worked before and put that into the mix,” he said.

“I have to look at what will work best with Grant at this stage of his life.”

Like Beringen, Pope believes in the partnership model of the coach-swimmer relationship, an approach that is frequently rejected by old-school coaches as weak or soft.

“With an open swimmer of that calibre you really have to work with them,” Pope said.

“Grant is self-driven so I don’t need to lecture him. One of the key ingredients is to have an agreement between you so he’s confident of the path ahead.”

He has much experience with this situation, having inherited Michael Klim, Giaan Rooney and Brett Hawke late in their careers.

“You have to try to take them to another level they haven’t been at before,” Pope said. “But if the swimmer reaches their goal, I count that as a success. If I have done the best I can for a swimmer, that’s all I can ask of myself.”

It will be tough for Pope to earn credit as Hackett’s coach unless he improves.

“It’s when they do another PB that you can claim that work, whether it’s a young 10-year-old or a champion,” Thompson said.

“There’s no doubting Popey’s ability to coach internationally, so that may make it a bit easier for him than it was for Tracey (who was an unknown).”

Easier, but not easy.