Australian relay team narrowly avoids being stripped of bronze medal

The Aussies breathed a big sigh of relief after a nervous moment saw them come perilously close to losing their swimming bronze medal.

There was a mere one hundredth of a second between a bronze medal and disqualification for the Australian men’s 4x200m freestyle relay team on Wednesday.

Zac Incerti dived into the pool 0.03 seconds too early for his changeover – nearly costing his team its third-placed finish in the final.

In any individual event, a false start would have resulted in immediate disqualification. But fortunately, in relay changeovers, swimmers get 0.03 seconds of leeway.

That means if Incerti had jumped off the blocks one-hundredth of a second sooner, Australia would have been disqualified.

Alexander Graham, Kyle Chalmers, Thomas Neill and Incerti ultimately came in third with a time of 7:01.84. The British team led by Tom Dean and Duncan Scott stormed to victory to claim gold, narrowly missing out on a world record, while the Russians claimed silver.

Relay changeovers are a fine art. Picture: Alex Coppel

Led off by recently-crowned 200m freestyle champion Dean and brought home by Scott, the Brits touched the wall in 6:58.58, just outside the 6:58.55 global mark held by the United States.

It meant they went one better than at Rio in 2016, when they came second.

The United States, who won the 4x100m earlier this week, were without superstar Caeleb Dressel, who opted out to focus on his other events. They finished fourth.

The Americans were in front after the opening 200m thanks to Kieran Smith, but they were quickly reeled in by the Brits, with James Guy and Matthew Richards swimming powerful middle legs to hand over to Scott.

With AFP