{"id":534422,"date":"2023-07-30T11:26:11","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T18:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=534422"},"modified":"2023-07-30T11:26:11","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T18:26:11","slug":"australia-claims-mantle-as-worlds-dominant-swim-team-in-fukuoka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/australia-claims-mantle-as-worlds-dominant-swim-team-in-fukuoka\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia Claims Mantle as World’s Dominant Swim Team in Fukuoka"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia Claims Mantle as World’s Dominant Swim Team in Fukuoka<\/strong><\/p>\n

Has Australia ever performed at such a high level at a major swimming competition? Perhaps in 2001, at the first World Championships held in Fukuoka, Japan, when the team had 13 gold medals. That meet was the signature performance of the legendary Ian Thorpe<\/strong>, who set world records in the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle while anchoring three gold-medal relays for Australia.\u00a0Grant Hackett<\/strong> set a 1500 free world record that would last a decade while\u00a0Petria Thomas<\/strong> swept the women’s 100 and 200 butterfly.<\/p>\n

In swimming’s return to Fukuoka this week, the Aussies were arguably better. The meet started with a bang as Australia won four gold medals on night one<\/a>, and the momentum continued from there.<\/p>\n

Just like 2001, there were 13 gold medals and once again six different individuals earning gold. But instead of winning just three silver and three bronze medals in 2001, this Australian group collected seven silver and five bronze for 25 in total, the Aussies’ largest total-medal tally ever at a global-level competition. Twenty-three of those medals came in individual events, surpassing the 21 medals the Dolphins won at the Tokyo Games while also earning four additional golds. So what Australia had merely<\/em> two individual world records this time?<\/p>\n

\"Mollie

Mollie O’Callaghan — Photo Courtesy: Andrea Masini \/ Deepbluemedia \/ Insidefoto<\/p><\/div>\n

For the majority of the two decades since Thorpe and Hackett’s prime, the Australian women have been superior to their male counterparts, and that pattern held through these championships.\u00a0Mollie O’Callaghan<\/strong> won five gold medals, including individual golds in the 100 free and 200 free (in world-record time)<\/a> as well as three relays while\u00a0Kaylee McKeown<\/strong> swept the women’s backstroke events, earning the honor of meet’s top female swimmer<\/a> for her efforts.<\/p>\n

Take your pick between those two for Female World Swimmer of the Year, but it’s likely that Australia will win the award for a third consecutive year with a third different swimmer.<\/p>\n

The previous two winners of that honor were involved in Australia’s efforts as well.\u00a0Ariarne Titmus<\/strong> won the so-called “Race of the Century” with\u00a0Summer McIntosh<\/strong> and\u00a0Katie Ledecky<\/strong> by simply dominating the 400 free and reclaiming the world record. Titmus also took silver behind O’Callaghan’s world record in the 200 free and bronze in the 800 free, hitting lifetime-best marks in both.\u00a0Emma McKeon<\/strong> had a quiet week individually but still contributed to three relay medals. Meanwhile,\u00a0Elizabeth Dekkers<\/strong>,\u00a0Shayna Jack<\/strong> and\u00a0Jenna Forrester<\/strong> all reached the podium for the first time at a global-level competition.<\/p>\n

For the men, Australia was supreme in the freestyle events.\u00a0Kyle Chalmers<\/strong> finally grabbed his long-awaited long course world title in the 100 free, and his anchor-leg magic propelled the Aussies to their first world title in the men’s 400 free relay in 12 years.\u00a0Cameron McEvoy<\/strong> might be the comeback-of-the-year story. McEvoy did not race in 2022 after failing to advance out of prelims at the Tokyo Olympics, and he had not won an individual medal at a World Championships (or Olympics) since 2015. But the 29-year-old dominated the 50 free in Fukuoka, with all three of his times faster than any other swimmer posted all meet.<\/p>\n

And in\u00a0Sam Short<\/strong>, Australia has its best freestyler since Hackett and Thorpe. He is the first Aussie man to win three individual medals at a single Worlds since \u2014 yep, you guessed it \u2014 Hackett in 2005, when he swept the 400, 800 and 1500-meter races and earned 200 free silver behind\u00a0Michael Phelps<\/strong>. Short opened the meet with gold in the 400 free, outdueling\u00a0Ahmed Hafnaoui<\/strong> in a furious finish, and he went on to take silver behind Hafnaoui in the 800 free and bronze behind Hafnaoui and\u00a0Bobby Finke<\/strong> in the 1500 free.<\/p>\n

“I had nothing to lose going into this 1500,” Short said after he led early in the 1500 free final<\/a> and ended up swimming a best time by nine seconds on his way to bronze. “I don’t think anyone expected me to get on the podium in this one. I’m pretty sure I took it out sub-3:50 in the first 400, which I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s been done before. It might not be the smartest move, but it paid off.”<\/p>\n

\"Samuel

Sam Short — Photo Courtesy: Andrea Staccioli \/ Deepbluemedia \/ Insidefoto<\/p><\/div>\n

Short’s 800-meter performance broke Hackett’s Australian record that lasted 18 years, and he ranks second all-time among his countrymen in the other two races: behind Thorpe in the 400 and behind Hackett in the 1500. In the last decade, several Aussies have emerged in hopes of following up Thorpe and Hackett in the longer freestyle events, and several achieved success, with\u00a0Mack Horton<\/strong> claiming 400 free Olympic gold in 2016 plus an impressive collection of international hardware while\u00a0Elijah Winnington<\/strong> was the 400 free world champion last year. But Short is the first true triple-distance threat, and he doesn’t turn 20 until mid-September.<\/p>\n

Not everything went perfectly for Australia, of course: McKeown was disqualified in the 200 IM semifinals for an illegal backstroke-to-breaststroke turn, and she would have been a legitimate gold-medal contender in the final.\u00a0Zac Stubblety-Cook<\/strong> lost his world title and world record in the 200 breaststroke, but on his way to silver, he surpassed his winning time from last year and nearly matched his Olympic-gold-medal winning time from 2021. Can’t blame Stubblety-Cook for\u00a0Qin Haiyang’s\u00a0<\/strong>explosion in the breaststroke events.<\/p>\n

As for relays, this meet marked the first time in 15 years, since the 2008 Olympics, that every Australian relay reached the podium. The quest to go eight-for-eight in relay medals was looking shaky entering the men’s 400 medley on the final evening, but\u00a0Bradley Woodward<\/strong> and\u00a0Stubblety-Cook kept their team in the mix before\u00a0Matt Temple<\/strong> recorded the second-fastest butterfly leg and Chalmers once again came home on fire, doing enough to get 26-hundredths ahead of France for the bronze.<\/p>\n

World Aquatics selected the United States as the top team of the meet<\/a> based on overall medal count and quantity of finalists, but no team could match the dominance of Australia this week, with its 13 gold medals nearly doubling the Americans’ seven (which the U.S. only achieved after a final-day surge). The combination of returning veterans with individual Olympic hardware (Chalmers, McKeown, Titmus and Stubblety-Cook) with a pair of 19-year-olds continuing to upstage their more-established rivals (O’Callaghan and Short) proved magical.<\/p>\n

The Aussies’ position at the top could be fleeting: the Americans will undoubtedly return stronger in the next test for global supremacy at next year’s Paris Olympics, particularly after their abundance of silver and bronze medals this week<\/a>. But Australia now has built a track record as the team that shows up in major moments, when medals and reputations are on the line. That’s the team that got it done under pressure this week.<\/p>\n

For the first time in decades, Australia is the world’s premier swimming nation.<\/p>\n