Olympic Games swim prospects Tom Neill and Mollie O’Callaghan break records at the Queensland Short Course Championship
Olympic Games swimming prospect Tom Neill broke a world record while Mollie O’Callaghan and middle distance young gun Samuel Short also fired at the Queensland Short Course Championships.
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Olympic Games swim young gun prospects Tom Neill and Mollie O’Callaghan continued to build toward Tokyo 2021, with Neill snaring a world short course record over the weekend.
Neill, a St Joseph’s College old boy from the Centenary Rackley squad, is now the 400m short course record holder while also finishing just .1 of a second outside the 800m world record at the Queensland Short Course Swimming championships.
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Neill is already a powerful contender for the 800m and 4x200m Olympic relay team while O’Callaghan, a student at St Peters Lutheran College Springwood, is a freestyle sprint powerhouse while also being a genuine all-rounder.
O’Callaghan, from Dean Boxall’s crack St Peters Western Swim Club, was a Queensland record breaker alongside exciting middle distance freestyle swimmer Samuel Short.
Short, 17, who is now embedded alongside Neill, Louis Townsend and Bronte Job under coach Damien Jones at Rackley Centenary, backed up a record breaking effort at the Brisbane Short Course Championship earlier in the month by undertaking a big program - doing the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle.
He was second in the 200m fly behind Tom Hauck then did a PB (14:43.68) in his pet 1500m which was an improvement of nine seconds on his swim a fortnight earlier.
Short again swam a PB in the 200m freestyle (1:47.15) and again in the 800m (3:44) to finish behind Neill.
Other highlights from the meet included
+ Sunshine Coast’s Lani Palister broke the Australian and Australian All-comers Open 800m freestyle record and Madeline Gough broke the Australian and Australian all-comers records in the 1500m Freestyle.
+ in the disability class Paige Leonhardt broke the World Para Swimming 100m breaststroke and 100m butterfly record followed up with the world record for 50m Breaststroke and 50m butterfly
+ University of Queensland’s Jack Ireland (disability) broke the 50m Freestyle Virtus World record and Liam Schluter broke the 400m Freestyle World Para Swimming Record.