Mack Horton fires shot at ‘drug cheat’ Sun Yang ahead of 400M final

MACK Horton ignited a major Olympic feud before his 400m final, slamming China’s Sun Yang as a “drug cheat” he doesn’t respect.

Australia's Mack Horton competes in a heat of the men's 400m freestyle during the swimming competitions at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

MACK Horton ignited a major feud with Chinese doper Sun Yang ahead of today’s Olympic 400m freestyle final as Australia set the stage for a potential golden double to start their campaign.

Australia’s women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team broke their own London 2012 Olympic record in the heats to qualify fastest for the finals (starting 11am AEST) while Great Britain’s Adam Peaty broke the first world record of the meet in the 100m breaststroke.

But the biggest statement came from Australia’s rising star Horton who slammed the reigning Olympic champ Sun as a “drug cheat.”

In what shaped as a ding-dong battle between Australia’s best emerging distance swimmer since Grant Hackett and Ian Thorpe and China’s king of the pool who served a secret doping ban in 2014, Horton slammed his nemesis as someone he does not respect.

Mack Horton has no time for his Chinese rival. Picture: Alex Coppel.

China's Sun Yang served a doping ban in 2014.

Sun tried to intimidate Horton during the training pool in Rio a few days ago, splashing him to try to interrupt his concentration in the middle of his session.

Horton ignored him but had no trouble calling him out after the pair qualified for the 400m freestyle final in second and fourth respectively.

“It kind of got played up in the media a little bit, he kind of splashed me to say hi and I ignored him because I don’t have time or respect for drug cheats and then he wasn’t too happy about that so he kept splashing me and I just got in and did my thing,” Horton said.

Horton is clearly on and ready for this showdown with Sun and the rest of the world. His heat time of 3:43.84 comfortably got him into tonight’s final behind USA’s Connor Dwyer in a personal best 3:43.42.

Horton and David McKeon congratulate each other after their opening swims.

Fellow Australian David McKeon also qualified for his first major international final in fifth place in 3:44.68 with Sun taking fourth place in 3:44.23.

Horton said he was feeling relaxed ahead of the final despite competing at his first Olympics.

“Surprisingly stupidly relaxed, I was kind of a bit nervous about how relaxed I was yesterday and this morning so it’s all working out,”

“I need to swim my own race and swim to what I know I can swim.”

Cate Campbell had a determined look in her eye after her stunning 51.80s final leg split set the tone with Australia’s relay time of 3:32.39, well faster than the 3:33.15 winning time from London four years ago.

Australia is set to promote Emma McKeon to the final line up after Madi Wilson, Brittany Elmslie and Bronte Campbell featured in the heats team alongside Cate Campbell.

“You can’t read into anything before an Olympic final, that’s why they’re called the Olympic Games because something special always happens,” Cate Campbell said.

“I think I’ve been faster in Glasgow … with relays you can’t really read too much into splits that you get so much off a changeover that it’s hard to gauge where you’re at really so it was a good morning swim and hopefully we can put something good together tonight as well.”

Britain's Adam Peaty set a new world record in his 100-meter breaststroke heat.

Britain’s world champ Peaty set the first world record of the Olympic Games, shattering his own 100m breaststroke mark with a time of 57.55 seconds.

Peaty lowered his previous best time of 57.92s by 0.37s.

“I went out pretty fast, quite easy, came back and I heard everyone cheering and I thought what are they cheering for, there’s no Brazilians in this lane?” Peaty said.

Australia’s Jake Packard managed to qualify for today’s semi-final in sixth place with a time of 59.26s while rookie Joshua Palmer finished in 30th place in 1:01.13.

Earlier Australia had made the perfect start to their swimming competition, with Tom Fraser-Holmes and Travis Mahoney both qualifying for the final of the 400m medley.

Fraser-Holmes progressed in sixth place with a time of 4:12.51 while Victorian Travis Mahoney set a new personal best time by more than 1.5 seconds to claim seventh spot for the final a time of 4:13.37.

Emma McKeon qualified for the 100m butterfly semi-final comfortably.

“I’m just going to get out there and race it and leave nothing in the water that way I can go home tonight sleep well knowing I had nothing left in the tank,” Fraser-Holmes said.

Emma McKeon made a solid start to her big Olympic campaign, qualifying for the 100m butterfly semi-final in ninth place with a time of 57.33s as reigning champ Sarah Sjostrom set the pace in 56.26s.

Fellow Aussie and McKeon’s training partner Maddie Groves however missed the semi-finals by just 0.02s, placing 17th with a time of 58.17s.

“I was pretty nervous because it was my first race so it’s nice to have my first race done and get that out of the way and I will be more comfortable going out tonight,” McKeon said.

“My turn was shocking and my finish was shocking. I can definitely improve on that.”

Australia’s Keryn McMaster just missed the 400m individual medley final in 10th place in 4:37.33, while West Australian Blair Evans placed 16th in 4:38.91.