Olympic swimmer Kyle Chalmers keen to downplay comparisons with Ian Thorpe

HE is a teenage man-child who races adults in a swimming pool and breaks them. Kyle Chalmers is the next Ian Thorpe, right?

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HE is a teenage man-child who races adults in a swimming pool and breaks them. He will be an Olympian in a few months and already has a lucrative deal with adidas.

Kyle Chalmers is the next Ian Thorpe, right?

“Honestly,” Chalmers says. “Compared to him, I have done nothing.”

Call it the curse of a talented swim-teen but the Thorpe comparisons have been coming thick and fast for Chalmers now for over a year.

They started when the burly Adelaide school kid, then aged 16, burned home fourth in the men’s 100m final at world championship trials and won Chalmers a spot on the relay team for Kazan.

It was the fastest time ever by a 16-year-old and it was no fluke.

Earlier this month Chalmers, now 17, finished second behind Cam McEvoy and booked an individual spot for the blue riband 100m freestyle in Rio.

He will be 18 at the Games but still the youngest male Australian swimmer at an Olympics since, you guessed it, a 17-year-old Thorpe in Sydney.

Chalmers understands the comparison but also finds it easy to swiftly reject.

Ian Thorpe at the NSW Swimming Championships in 1997.

“Being compared to Ian Thorpe is really tough for me because he’s done it all in the sport, he’s the king,” Chalmers said.

“He was a world champion at 15. He was breaking world records at 17. He was an Olympic champion at 17.

“I broke a junior world record and got a few golds at junior worlds. I haven’t achieved anything like he has done in his career.

“Give me a couple more years and I will give it my best shot to reach his level. But for me, he has been the greatest athlete Australia has ever produced in the sport and it is very tough to chase down Ian Thorpe.

“ The comparison will be there because of the age, but I have to just try and not think about it too much.”

Chalmers’ personal best of 48.03 in Adelaide was quicker than Thorpe’s fastest ever 100 metres.

Kyle Chalmers may remind people of Ian Thorpe, but he says the comparisons are not warranted.

But by the time he’d turned 18, Thorpe had already won three Olympic gold medals, and 12 other golds at major world events. Nine of them in world record times.

Chalmers said he was stoked to meet Thorpe for the first time last week when the swimming great spoke to the members of the Australian team for Rio.

“I was lucky enough to meet him last Friday. He got up and spoke to us,” Chalmers said.

“The message was just to enjoy myself. There is obviously going to be a lot of pressure on the swimming team, there always is. But just to enjoy myself and have fun while I am competing.

“For me another thing he said was “be mentally strong”. He broke his leg leading into Sydney 2000, his ankle I think it was, but he knew he had done the training to be able to win gold. Standing behind those blocks knowing you have done the training is going to be the key.”

Chalmers still has a year left at Immanuel College but after realising his massive training load doesn’t fit in with a full day at school, the son of former Port Adelaide AFL player Brett Chalmers is now doing school part-time.

Chalmers’ 48.03 in the 100 free in Adelaide is faster than Thorpe ever swam it. Pic: Sarah Reed

Invited by the AOC to be one of the models of the Olympic team uniform on Wednesday in Sydney — ominously in the medal presentation outfit — Chalmers said his life had changed “massively” since booking his place on the plane to Rio.

He was content to be a nobody at his first major international meet last year but surely now, in the macho world of 100m freestyle, Chalmers is now a face known around the world? A real threat?

“Not at all. I think I am still an underdog massively,” Chalmers said.

“James Roberts has been faster than me, Maggie (James Magnussen) has been amazingly faster than me and Cam (McEvoy) is 47.0, so those guys are still ahead of me. I still have a long way to go.

“It’s a bit of a weird thing. I got the individual spot but those guys are coming back from injury, so it was tough for them at trials this year.

“I just have to make most of the opportunity and give it a red hot crack over there.”