Sorry Thorpey it’s over: Clear Aussie GOAT emerges in Paris pool

Emma McKeon has the most gold. Ian Thorpe changed swimming forever. But now Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown have made their case.

Who is the GOAT? McKeon, Mckeown, Thorpe or Titmus?

Kaylee McKeown stands alone.

More than 4000 athletes have competed for Australia at an Olympic Games but as the swimming program concludes in Paris the bespectacled backstroker is the greatest of them all.

By going back-to-back in the 100m and 200m backstroke events in Paris, McKeown has risen above all of our green and gold greats.

Still just 23, she joins the rarest of swimming company as one of 14 male or female swimmers to win at least four individual Olympic golds.

That exclusive club features Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Mark Spitz, Kristin Otto, Krisztina Egerszegi, Aleksandr Popov, Roland Matthes, Inge de Bruijn, Kosuke Kitajima, Tamás Darnyi, Yana Klochkova - and after this Olympics McKeown and Frenchman Leon Marchand.

Just two days ago, Emma McKeon was widely celebrated as our most decorated Olympian after claiming her sixth gold medal - breaking a mark she’d jointly held with Ian Thorpe.

The retiring 30-year-old’s resume is incredible.

McKeon has the most overall medals (13) by an Aussie and dominated a single Olympics - winning four gold and three bronze in Tokyo - in a way we hadn’t seen since Shane Gould in Munich ‘72.

The bespectacled backstroker is our best ever. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

No one from our country has had a bigger impact on the sport of swimming than Thorpe. He changed the way coaches taught their charges the world over after winning the 400m freestyle in Sydney while taking almost 100 fewer strokes than his nearest competitor.

The Thorpedo then achieved legend status by winning the “race of the century” against Pieter van den Hoogenband, Michael Phelps and Grant Hackett in Athens.

But you sense now both would trade their careers for what McKeown has achieved, even if backstrokers can be overlooked in comparison to freestylers.

McKeon and Thorpe might have more medals, but we’re not the USA — we rank medal tallies by gold.

And when it comes to gold medals - McKeown’s haul might be smaller than McKeon’s, but it sparkles a little brighter.

You see, both McKeon and Thorpe - like a handful of Australian Olympians with at least three gold medals - have boosted their totals with relay wins.

McKeon has only two individual gold medals - the 50m and 100m freestyle in Japan. Her other four came with a helping hand.

The only gold Thorpe shared with teammates was a 4x100m freestyle relay in Sydney that would have never been won without him.

But in swimming, the smallest of margins matter. And finishing half a second behind van den Hoogenband in the 200m freestyle in Sydney has left the Thorpedo just short of McKeown.

At least Thorpe took revenge on van den Hoogenband in the 200m freestyle in Athens. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images)

Ariarne Titmus is in the same place.

Like Thorpe, she also has a win in the women’s version of the “race of century” after smoking Summer McIntosh and Katie Ledecky in the 400m in Paris.

But the Tasmanian highlighted why no Aussie swimmer in 128 years of competition before McKeown had won four individual golds after being pipped in the 200m by compatriot Mollie O’Callaghan. It’s just that hard.

No one is arguing the like of Cate Campbell (four relay gold medals) or Libby Trickett (one individual gold, three relays) are on the same level as the likes of Dawn Fraser (three individual gold) or Murray Rose (three individual gold), and it’s not any different with McKeown.

Like Gould and Titmus, she’s done it all on foreign soil too.

Thorpe became a star in Sydney, while Fraser, Rose and triple gold medal-winning athletics legend Betty Cuthbert all first emerged at the 1956 Melbourne Games. Home crowds help.

Going back to back — in two events — matters too. Fraser is the gold standard in this area after winning three consecutive 100m freestyle crowns - but who is to say McKeown can’t do the same in one or both of her pet events in Los Angeles in four years’ time.

Then there will be no argument at all about who wears the GOAT crown.

Most individual gold medals for Australia

4 - Kaylee McKeown (2020: 100m back, 200m back; 2024: 100m back, 200m back)

3 - Dawn Fraser (1956: 100m free; 1960: 100m free; 1964: 100m free), Murray Rose (1956: 400m free, 1500m free; 1960: 400m free), Betty Cuthbert (1956: 100m, 200m, 1964: 400m), Shane Gould (1972: 200m free, 400m free, 200 IM) Ian Thorpe (2000: 400m free; 2004: 200m free, 400m free) Ariarne Titmus (2020: 200m free, 400m free; 2024: 400m free)