Tokyo Olympics 2021: Zac Stubblety-Cook wins 200m breaststroke gold, sets new Olympic record
New Olympic breaststroke gold medallist Zac Stubblety-Cook swims with a large scar across his shoulder after his teenage life was rocked by cancer surgery.
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He was the mystery man of the Australian Olympic swim team, in an event that Australia has largely dismissed for the men for over five decades.
His mother Julie thought he’d be happy to make the semi-finals of the Tokyo Olympics.
But Zac Stubblety-Cook, his coach Vince Raleigh, and his teammates, knew he was flying.
“You only be an underdog once, right? And I had that luxury today,” the 22 year old said, clutching his Olympic gold medal.
The way Stubblety-Cook attacks his races is an anomaly — only the world record-holder Russian Anton Chupkov adopts the same caution in the initial 150m before ramping up the pace with a lung-busting finishing flourish.
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That meant the Queenslander — a psychology and business student — was comfortable seeing the key opponents like 100m Tokyo silver medallist Arno Kamminga going out at near-world record time before sweeping them all before him.
“Internally, we knew his closing speed and how he swam his races and so the way he’s been training, the way he’s been preparing, the result was no surprise to me,’’ Taylor said.
As for Stubblety-Cook, who was so terrified of the water as a youngster he freaked out at the deep end, prompting his family to send him to swim school, said simply: “I trust myself’’.
Mitch Larkin describes him as one of the most-professional athletes on the team.
“I backed him 100 per cent, the way he races the 200m takes a lot of guts and a lot of trust in your ability to come home that last 100,” Larkin said.
“It is pretty amazing and he absolutely deserves it — he’s a pretty impressive athlete.”
Stubblety-Cook had been keeping himself in check for months — doing all of the training, keeping to himself, being quiet.
He’s been described as a “pretty reserved guy, pretty emotionless’’.
Love this. Why our new Olympic champion @stubblety took up swimming: “I was terrified of the water until about four years old, so I learned to swim just for water safety. By the time I was nine, I loved swimming." @telegraph_sport@AUSOlympicTeam
— David Riccio (@DaveRic1) July 29, 2021
Larkin added: “It was the first time I’ve seen him actually show emotion after swimming a race and I think if you can’t show it at an Olympic final when else can you do it?”
Stubblety-Cook bears a large scar across his shoulder, a result of cancer surgery six years ago that shocked his then teenage life.
The tumour was benign, but it was large — the size of a golf ball.
“We didn’t really know what it was,” Stubblety-Cook said.
“It was something that turned up and caused a little bit of pain and we had to get rid of it.”
At that time he considered whether to continue to put to the effort into his swimming, but the two month recovery time “was a tough period”.
He likened being out of the pool letting his shoulder heal to last year, when he was “gutted’’ that the Australian Olympic team was not going to send a team to Tokyo because of the pandemic, followed by the postponement of the Games. He ended up out of the water for four months, training on an exercise bike instead.
“It was a bit like last year,’’ he said of the tumour.
“It was one of the first times swimming had ever been taken away from me.
“It makes you hungry when the thing you love the most, the thing that I’d done since I was 10 years old, was taken away.
“It made me realise I wanted it more than ever.”
Stubblety-Cook was a heat swimmer at the Commonwealth Games, which at the time was “depressing”, but his breakthrough year was at the pan pacific championships in Tokyo three years ago. In 2019, at the world championships, he was fourth, timing his Olympic run perfectly.
Australia’s success in breaststroke has been rare. Australia hasn’t had an Olympic champion in the 200m breaststroke since Ian O’Brien won in Tokyo 1964. Brenton Rickard won a silver at the Beijing Olympics.
Australian viewers immediately captured Stubblety-Cook’s dry sense of humour when he told a television audience that “I made it entertaining, hey’’ with his last-stroke victory.
“That’s the way I train, the way I race, I can’t change, it’s too late for that, I am happy the process worked out.’’
And, when asked about his calm character, he said, with a wry smile: “When you swim up and down the pool for two and a half hours, twice a day, you’ve got to be pretty patient.”
The smokey who saluted in Tokyo
— Robert Craddock and Andrew Dawson
Olympic silver medallist Mark Stockwell last week told a crowd of 800 at a lunch in Brisbane he had a man to watch for the Tokyo Games … Zac Stubblety-Cook.
“He’s my smokey,’’ declared Stockwell and the reaction was telling.
A couple of people clapped. An old schoolmate went “whoa’’. But mostly there was just silence among the throng.
Most just continued to stare at the speaker thinking “fair enough’’ without any recognition because they did not really know his name.
And yet Zac Stubblety-Cook rose to Olympic glory among them.
He went to primary school at Wellers Hill 6.7 kilometres away from the very seats in which they were sitting at the lunch at the Brisbane Convention Centre.
He went to secondary school at the Anglican Grammar School (Churchie) which was four kilometres away. He trained at Chandler which is 16 kilometres up the road and lives at Nathan 10.7 kilometres away.
How local do you want the kid to be?
Yet the swimmer with the unforgettable name had somehow been forgotten in the Olympic build-up despite the fact he was a Pac Pac silver medallist and world championship fourth placegetter.
Somehow the dazzling lights which trailed Arnie and Emma and Kaylee missed Gelignite Zac who produced one of the most stirring Olympic finished since … Ariane Titmus the previous day to win a rousing 200m breaststroke gold.
Here’s five things you might like to know about him:
— He was scared of the water as a child when he first encountered it at Wellers Hill State School.
— In one of his first efforts in the pool he can still remember swimming a half lap, closing his eyes and headbutting the wall.
— He became a breaststroker after being inspired by the legendary USA swim giant Michael Phelps during his eight gold medal spree at the Beijing Olympics. “I did not know I would be a breaststroker, but I was watching the swimming and the atmosphere and the performance of Phelps, even though you did not know the gravity of what he did it at the time,’’ he said.
— He felt he “a sense of embarrassment — “ I choked’’ — after failing at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. He had admitted to being “broken’’ by the experience but in a way it also made him because …
— Back he roared back to win silver at the Pan Pacs. He knew it was a moment when his self belief was on the line. As he looked down the lane he thought “c'mon … seize the moment.’’
He did – again today – extraordinary.
Even his mother Julie was shocked by his progress.
“We were just hoping for him to make the semi-finals,’’ she told Channel 7.
“What a reward it is for all the effort he put in.’’
He may have flown under the radar but he is as good a story as Australian in these Games … a kid who hit the wall when he first swam and was broken when he failed at the Commonwealth Games he won Olympic gold.
A smokey no more.
McLoughlin fifth in 800m freestyle
Earlier, Australia’s Jack McLoughlin finished fifth in the inaugural men’s 800m freestyle final.
The silver medallist in the 400m, McLoughlin stopped the clock at 7:45.00 after being near the back of the field all the way.
The gold medal went to American Robert Finke, who overhauled Gregorio Paltrinieri in the last few strokes after the Italian had led from the start.
“Pretty disappointed to be honest, I want a 7:42 at trials and I thought I could go a bit more if I had a good race around me, so I’m pretty disappointed but yeah it is what it is and just get ready for 1500,” McLoughlin said
“It’s always time to back up after some hard races but I’m excited for it. It is always a good event so see I go times when I really hot.”
Heartache for Larkin after narrow miss
Another Aussie swimmer has suffered an agonising near miss at the Tokyo Olympics.
This time it’s Mitch Larkin, who finished 10th in the semi-finals of the men’s 200m individual medley.
Ranked third in the world, Larkin had high hopes of winning a medal in the race, which has opened up after the retirement of Michael Phelps, who won it at each of the past four Olympics.
Larkin even ditched his signature event, the 200m backstroke, to focus on the medley.
He finished fifth in his semi, missing a place in the final by 0.16.
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Originally published as Tokyo Olympics 2021: Zac Stubblety-Cook wins 200m breaststroke gold, sets new Olympic record
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