Her arch-rival stole the world record. Six weeks later, McKeown got her revenge

Kaylee McKeown kept her language relatively clean as she celebrated back-to-back Olympic titles in the 100m backstroke, but there might have been a few F-bombs dropped in the stands at Paris La Defense Arena where her family was sitting when she turned for her final lap in fourth position.

They needn’t have worried. The 23-year-old Australian powered off the wall to overhaul her rivals, including the American Regan Smith who had smashed McKeown’s world record at the US trials last month. That shot from Smith was heard around the world but Australian champions Cate Campbell and Stephanie Rice felt the loss of the world record would be a blessing in disguise.

It turned out to be perfect ammunition for McKeown, who showed her power off the wall and her mental toughness to overhaul not only Smith, but fellow American Katharine Berkoff and Canada’s Kylie Masse to win Australia’s fourth swimming gold medal in the pool at these Olympics, and sixth overall.

It was a magnificent swim and by defeating the American pair she struck a mighty blow in the fight for supremacy between Australia and the US in the pool. The Americans have two gold medals from these Games to Australia’s four after four nights of competition.

“I knew it would come down for that last 25 metres, that’s something I have been practising for,” McKeown said.

“That’s something the Americans and myself are good at. I knew it would come down to the last five or 10 metres.”

Kaylee McKeown went back to back in the 100m backstroke.Credit: AP

“It feels surreal to be honest with you, and I wasn’t sure if I’d be any good out there tonight, but the Americans gave me a red-hot push.”

She hit the wall in 57.33 seconds – 0.33 seconds ahead of Smith – with Berkoff taking bronze. Perth teenager Iona Anderson finished fifth.

The American Smith gets to keep her world record, but that didn’t bother McKeown, who matched her personal best time, which after all was the world record until a month ago. She squinted at the clock. “Without my glasses I can’t see too much so it was nice to have the little scoreboard behind me and just soak it in for a hot second,” she said.

Asked whether losing her world record so close to the Olympics had spurred her on, McKeown didn’t bite. She didn’t need to. “I’ve had that question a few times to be honest with you and my reaction is I’m me, I do me,” she said.

Kaylee McKeown embraces her US rival Regan Smith.Credit: Getty Images

“That was equal to my personal best, so to have all this atmosphere, all that adrenalin running through me and be able to perform like that, it’s really special for me.”

McKeown’s third individual Olympic gold moves her to equal with Ian Thorpe, Ariarne Titmus, Murray Rose, Shane Gould and Dawn Fraser – all greats of the sport.

With a total of four golds to her name, including relays in Tokyo, another two here (in the 200m backstroke and 200m individual medley) could see McKeown leapfrog Thorpe (five gold) to join Emma McKeon with the all-time Australian Olympic record.

Hundreds of thousands of Australians who were shut in at home during the pandemic three years ago will remember McKeown letting out a “F--- yeah!” on national TV after she won in Tokyo. It was a meme-worthy moment, and spawned a line of T-shirts emblazoned with the expletive that summed up the spontaneity of the young woman from Queensland.

McKeown was talking about her late father at the time, and what he might say if he could see her become an Olympic champion. This time, as a four-time Olympic champion and potentially with a couple to come, she again paid tribute to him as her “superpower”.

“I like to think I have a superpower and that’s my Dad. I believe he was with me tonight,” she said.

“I’m not going to swear, but we can all put words together. He would be extremely proud. I’m grateful to have my family here because he would be here in spirit,” she said, before delivering a moderately potty-mouthed thank you to her family, who were bedecked in gold Kaylee T-shirts in the stands. “They deal with a lot of shit, thank you for all of that.”

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