Jack Cartwright fights back from heart palpitations to be part of 4x100m relay team
WHEN swimmer Jack Cartwright’s max heartrate soared over 200 beats per minute during Commonwealth Games selection trials, his Gold Coast hopes looked headed into an ambulance right along with him.
WHEN sprint freestyler Jack Cartwright’s max heartrate soared over 200 beats per minute during a mid-race drama his diving Commonwealth Games selection hopes looked headed into an ambulance right along with him.
He never let those worrying palpitations define him but his impressive fighting qualities over the next 30 hours certainly did when he rose from a hospital bed to qualify strongly for a Games swim in the 100m freestyle.
Swimming’s “Jack of Hearts” will now be giving plenty of that to the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay team, so often an enigmatic unit.
A remodelled quartet will be chasing gold in the pool today and Cartwright will be beside an Olympic champion, Kyle Chalmers, who has beaten the same heart condition with surgery.
“Unbelievable resilience. Jack is probably the toughest kid I’ve seen at that,” coach Dean Boxall said of Cartwright’s fightback from drama at the trials just a month ago in the same pool.
“He should have been gone. He should have put his feet up on the couch and said, ‘I’m out’, but he wanted to fight.”
Boxall is a hard taskmaster and when he says the Biloela product’s trials were probably shot with that incident, you believe him.
Cartwright’s heartrate spike in a 200m freestyle heat meant he failed to qualify for a final he could not possibly have swum anyway.
His full focus is now the relay and the 100m heats on Saturday morning before another visit to a specialist after the Games to discuss whether the Chalmers’ option of surgery to correct Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT) will be replicated.
You don’t want “what ifs” filling your head at a Comm Games and both Boxall and Cartright, 19, have pushed the surgery option way to the back of their minds.
“That’ll be after. We haven’t really discussed that, we just wanted to get through to the Commonwealth Games and we’ll basically address that after,” Boxall said.
“But Jack’s fine and doing his job as Jack does.”
Australian head coach Jacco Verhaeren said the issue, which is a very occasional issue for Cartwright, had been managed into a plan after consultation with specialists post-trials.
“Is it dangerous health-wise? That’s the No. 1 and the conclusion is it isn’t so we’ll look at a plan after this competition,” Verhaeren said.
Cartwright is a 100m wildcard. He has wonderful speed in the water and the gains he has to make to catch the times of decorated countrymen Chalmers and Cam McEvoy are biggest on the technical side, the start and turns.
He is a squadmate of distance freestyle hope Ariarne Titmus at the St Peters Western club so you can bet he is not short of background mileage at training under Boxall, a super-enthusiast who has kept the production line of stars pumping from the school pool in Brisbane’s west since Michael Bohl moved to the Gold Coast.
Having a reputation for producing tough swimmers is exactly what Australian swimming needs for the new wave.
Originally published as Jack Cartwright fights back from heart palpitations to be part of 4x100m relay team
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