Olympics 2021: Gloating Americans revive ‘smashing guitars’ slur with Tokyo swimming boast
Team USA seem to think they’re assured of gold in the pool. It seems they’ve learned nothing from the “smashing guitars” saga 21 years ago.
Swimming
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If Olympic gold medals were handed out for trash-talking, the American swimming team would be unbeatable.
Two decades after vowing to smash Australia’s Olympic swimmers “like guitars”, they’re at it again, lighting the fuse for another explosive showdown with the Dolphins by dismissing our team’s prospects of success in Tokyo.
You would have thought the US swim team would have learnt to zip it up after Gary Hall Jr ended up with egg on his face after boasting that the US men would smash Ian Thorpe’s 4x100m freestyle relay team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
History was on his side as the bragging Americans had never been beaten in the event before then, but Hall’s bluster famously helped inspire Thorpe to steam past him on the last lap to break the world record and win the gold medal for Australia.
The underdog Aussie quartet rubbed it in their noses by strumming air guitars on the pool deck as America’s stranglehold on the relay was broken forever and they lost to the South Africans in 2004 then the French in 2012.
Twenty-one years on from Sydney, it seems that nothing has changed, with outspoken American breaststroker Lilly King now making an even more outrageous prediction.
The reigning Olympic and world champion and world record holder in 100m breaststroke, King is not only a great swimmer but one of the few personalities willing to use her voice in a sport where competitors are told to be seen and not heard.
A fearless critic of swimming’s lax approach to punishing drug cheats, she’s never shy about spouting her opinion but her jaw-dropping predictions for Tokyo are already in danger of backfiring the same way as Hall Jr’s faux pas before Sydney.
“I think the (US) women, if we have the meet we can have, can win every single individual gold,” she said.
“That would be pretty cool, right? But really, just looking at it, I think that is a genuine possibility.”
King’s chest-thumping forecast that the American women will sweep the board in Tokyo has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the swimming world, particularly in Australia.
While the Americans have topped the medal count at every Olympics and world championships since 2001, the Dolphins haven’t won a single individual Olympic gold medal in women’s swimming since Beijing in 2008 but have reason to think the drought will end in Tokyo with Emma McKeon (50m freestyle, 100m freestyle), Ariarne Titmus (200m freestyle, 400m freestyle) and Kaylee McKeown (100m backstroke, 200m backstroke, 200m individual medley) all ranked No. 1 in the world this year.
The Dolphins also know their swimming history so have wisely resisted the temptation to throw many verbal grenades back at the gloating Americans, though they aren’t backing away from the challenge, because all the indications are that it will be a close contest.
Going on the best times produced from the recent Australian and US Olympic trials, the teams are locked at 7-7 head-to-head in the 14 individual events in women’s swimming.
Titmus has made no secret that she still considers Katie Ledecky - who has already been anointed by America’s cheerleading media as the GOAT - the favourite to win the 400m freestyle gold medal, even though she beat her for the gold at the 2019 world championships.
“I’ve beaten her but she said she was so sick,” Titmus said.
“Imagine if she was well, I’m guessing she probably would have beaten me, I still believe she’s better than me.”
Ledecky’s sour response to losing to Titmus at the world championships did not go unnoticed as she turned her back on the Australian immediately after the race, talking to her team Leah Smith instead of her conqueror.
Last week, when Titmus came within a whisker of breaking Ledecky’s 400m world record and Federica Pellegrini’s long standing 200m freestyle world record, the American was again dismissive of her threat in Tokyo.
“The medals aren‘t given this week,” Ledecky said.
“So I don‘t think we have to get too caught up in what times people are going here versus anywhere else in the world right now.”
Originally published as Olympics 2021: Gloating Americans revive ‘smashing guitars’ slur with Tokyo swimming boast
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