Mollie O’Callaghan heaps pressure onto Ariarne Titmus ahead of 200m showdown at Paris Olympics
Mollie O’Callaghan has fired an early shot in the mental battle with Ariarne Titmus ahead of their blockbuster showdown in the 200m freestyle final at the Paris Olympics.
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Mollie O’Callaghan has fired an early shot in the mental battle with Ariarne Titmus, declaring all the pressure sits squarely on the shoulders of the defending Olympic champion and new world record holder in their battle for the Paris gold medal.
While few have tackled Titmus head on in mental disintegration and lived to tell the tale, the fact O’Callaghan is talking the talk in the mind game battle with her training partner is a sign the former world record holder won’t back down in their epic showdown.
Titmus qualified fastest for the 200m freestyle final with a start-to-finish victory in their semi-final with a time of 1:54.64 to narrowly edge out the fast-finishing O’Callaghan in 1:54.70.
They will eyeball each other in the Monday night’s final and after Titmus shocked O’Callaghan and reduced her to tears by breaking her world record at the Olympic trials eight weeks ago, O’Callaghan believes all the hype and focus should be on Titmus.
“Heading into this week, there is pressure and there’s expectation. I want to do well for Australia, I want to do well for my swim team, I want to do well for everyone so I’ve got to handle it in a different way,” O’Callaghan said.
“And especially with these events, I come not ranked first so in the end the pressure is on the people who are number one or past Olympic champions, stuff like that.
“So this is my first time having an individual event at the Olympics, and it’s new and fresh for me. So I’ve just got to learn as I go.”
If Titmus can salute in the 200m freestyle it would create Australian Olympic history as the first athlete to win a back-to-back golden Olympic double having won the 400m freestyle title for the second time on opening night.
But if there’s one thing we’ve learnt about Titmus it is that she is impervious to pressure.
Whether it be breaking the hearts of her rivals in the pool by pushing them beyond their limits or casually smiling her way through endless interviews post race as O’Callaghan rushes through like she’s running late to a business meeting, Titmus is professionalism personified and shown no visible chinks in her armour.
“I think once you get into the meet and you get the ball rolling, you kind of start to calm down a little bit and start to feel the momentum,” she said.
“So I got the job done tonight and I’m excited for tomorrow.
“You always want to be in the middle of the pool in a final and get yourself in a good position. But that was really the only plan for tonight.
“I tried to conserve as much as I could for tomorrow. I’ll try to get a really good sleep and come in for like swim in the morning and then be ready to go for tomorrow night.”
Aussie underdog hunting unlikely 200m medal
If you believe in the Aussie underdog story, then fishing store attendant Max Giuliani is the one to get behind as he hunts an unlikely Olympic medal in the 200m freestyle final.
Every Olympic Games tosses up an unexpected great Aussie medal, a new name shot from oblivion into the spotlight with a sensational performance that defies the form guide.
Giuliani, the Gold Coast-based Tasmanian who had to tell his boss he needed 10 weeks off from his job at Anaconda to even attend the Olympics, is the leading contender to be that story.
Promising to be the “big man” and not get overawed by the occasion of an Olympic final in his first ever Australian swim team, Giuliani rocketed into medal calculations with a stunning all-or-nothing semi-final swim to qualify fifth fastest for the final.
Romanian teen superfreak David Popovici was fastest man into the final in 1:44.53 and looms as the one to beat, but after that there is a blanket finish with Britain’s Duncan Scott (1:44.94), USA’s Luke Hobson (1:45.19), Germany’s 400m Olympic gold medallist Lukas Martens (1:45.36) and Giuliani (1:45.37) all within half a second.
Giuliani won’t die wondering in Monday night’s final, knowing he swam a faster time at the Queensland state titles in December last year and he has the capacity to go even faster if he can put the perfect race together
“Awesome first Olympics and now I’m going into my first final which is amazing,” he said.
“100 per cent I think it’s anyone’s race. I mean, on paper, it looks like David is the one to beat but anything can happen.
“I’m a much better swimmer than I was when I went 1:44 in December so hopefully I can put it all together tomorrow and show everyone how hard I’ve worked and hopefully reap the rewards for it.
“I can’t get left behind by those boys Otherwise I’m never going to catch them.
“I mean, my back end is pretty good, but it’s not that good.
“I’m gonna have to come back in a 50-point, which is very, very difficult to do. And when you go out the item 52.1, it’s just not feasible. I want to be out there in the middle. So I gotta get after it.”
Giuliani will start the race in lane two and while he benefited from trying to keep up with the early speed of Popovici in his semi-final, the final will require a blinkered approach and stepping up his confidence levels to know he can match the big dogs of the pool.
“If you walk into the marshalling room like I don’t know, kind of hunched over and sad you’ve already lost,” he said.
“You gotta really fully believe in yourself and be the big man and back yourself even if you’re not going to beat those guys.
“You’ve got to think that every day of the week. If you don’t back yourself you set yourself up for failure so you gotta get out there and be the man and act like the man.
“It’s all about staying in your own lane, but you’ve got to focus on your process and what your coach tells you to do. If you don’t do that you kind of set yourself up for failure.
“So you really have got to prepare and stick to that race plan no matter what.”
Originally published as Mollie O’Callaghan heaps pressure onto Ariarne Titmus ahead of 200m showdown at Paris Olympics
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