Cameron McEvoy left shocked after disappointing swim in the 100m freestyle final
CAMERON McEvoy is baffled, but not heart broken. That time will come as he realises he saved his worst swim of his career for the biggest stage of them all.
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CAMERON McEvoy is baffled, but not heart broken.
That time will come in the days, weeks and months ahead when the world’s fastest man comes to the realisation he saved the worst race of his career for his biggest moment on the Olympic stage.
McEvoy was left shocked and without answers that he finished seventh in his 100m freestyle final at the Olympic Games, his time of 48.12s was more than a full second slower than his trials victory last April.
The result hurt but not nearly as much as winning silver at the world titles last year.
McEvoy puts that down to the fact he was able to ride the wave of emotion as young teammate Kyle Chalmers basked in the glory of victory and he felt part of that with him.
“Initially when I dwell on it, it is tough and I imagine it’s going to sink in a lot more over the next few weeks,” McEvoy said.
“But funnily enough it doesn’t feel as gruesome and as raw as what coming second at worlds last year, which is odd because this is much bigger.
“I imagine that is probably because I had Kyle in that race and his success and his happiness I can feel that and I think right now I’m kind of riding the wave that he is on.
“I couldn’t imagine what he is thinking and he has got the world at his feet right now.”
For the past four months McEvoy has been the name on everyone’s lips. Much like James Magnussen in London four years ago he came in as the overwhelming favourite only for everything to go up in flames.
He put all his eggs in the one 100m freestyle basket, reducing what started out as a six event program by dropping out of the 200m freestyle so he could be fresher for his main medal chance events.
Then he was left out of the 4x200m freestyle relay and any chance to really blow out the cobwebs before his main race was gone.
His 100m time was so disappointing that McEvoy revealed he’s done it multiple times at Bond University in training during heavy work.
McEvoy will forensically search for answers following this debacle. His inquisitive mind will demand a full shake down of every aspect of his training between last April’s stunning trials performance to this Rio let down.
“It definitely wasn’t the best of races and I didn’t feel great at all in the race or in the warm up,” McEvoy said.
“That’s the sport, you can train 11.5 months and do the taper and things don’t work out and we’ve seen that more often than not.
“Right now it’s hard to pinpoint anything specifically. It could be something to do with taper, it could be something to do with not having that initial heavy load of the program with the 200s at the start of the week.
“That is something I’ve got plenty of time to go down, sit with (my coach Richard Scarce) and think through the things we can do better and what changed between now and trials and work on it.
“Funnily enough when you’ve been racing as long as I have I touched and I knew it hadn’t gone my way and I knew the time would be quite a long way off what I’d done.
“It is frustrating because I’ve done times like that in training in heavy load actually at Bond in the middle of the session but it is baffling to me especially with my analytical mind.
“Hopefully I can get back and kind of pinpoint what went wrong and try to improve on that.”
If anything cannot be lost on this night for McEvoy, it’s his sportsmanship towards Chalmers. They embraced in and out of the water after the race, McEvoy raising Chalmers’ arm in the air to the delighted cheers of the entire crowd.
“The rest of Australia can get excited over a young 18-year-old at the start of a career. He is the Olympic champion at 18,” McEvoy said.
“And from what I see he has a lot more to improve on. That’s not to take away from his gold just to see the prospects of what he he’s already achieved now and what he can achieve in the future.
“He just has everything going for him. He is a great kid, a great personality and he is a bloody great swimmer.”
Originally published as Cameron McEvoy left shocked after disappointing swim in the 100m freestyle final
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