TRIPLE Beijing gold medal winner Stephanie Rice last night joined Kieren Perkins, Susie O'Neill and Ian Thorpe and by capping her Olympic gold medal victories with the Australian Swimmer of the Year award.

Rice, 20, who won gold in the 200 metres and 400m individual medleys and as a member of the 4 x 200m freestyle relay in China, and broke world records in each of those events, was an obvious choice for the prestigious award, presented at a black tie ceremony in Sydney last night.

Since its inception in 1990, only 10 swimmers have won the award, with Thorpe winning five times from 1999 to 2003, Perkins three times (1992-94), and O'Neill (1995-96), Grant Hackett (2003, 2005) and Michael Klim (1997-98) winning it twice.

Rice joins Hayley Lewis (1991), O'Neill, Jodie Henry (2004), Leisel Jones (2006), and Libby Lenton (2007) as female winners of the award.

Having enjoyed tremendous medley success this year, Rice has now hinted she may also now look to spread her talent across more events. "It's going to be great for me to hopefully mix up the schedule a little bit," she said. "I haven't talked to 'Bohlly' [coach Michael Bohl] yet as to what the focus will be for world [championship] trials, and it depends what the schedule is like and what I can handle, but it's going to be good for me to pick up some events that I haven't raced for a while because I was focusing on the medleys.

"I'll never take the focus completely off the medleys but I'd definitely love to pick up the 200m freestyle a bit more seriously and maybe the 100m and 200m fly, and the 100m and 200m back [stroke] maybe."

Other major award winners last night included Libby Trickett (People's Choice Award), team captain Hackett (Swimmers' Swimmer of the Year), Bohl (Coach of the Year), Cate Campbell (Discovery Swimmer of the Year), Ky Hurst (Open Water Swimmer of the Year), Matthew Cowdrey (Swimmer of the Year with a Disability), and Tracey Menzies (Open Water Coach of the Year).

Michael Cowley