Matt Wilson on verge of unlocking door to Australian selection

No one has beaten on the door of the Australian team more persistently than teenage breaststroker Matt Wilson.

Breaststroke hopeful Matthew Wilson. Picture: Sarah Reed

No one has beaten on the door of the Australian team more persistently without reward in the last year than teenage breaststroker Matt Wilson.

The world junior championships silver medallist has been bloodied and bruised by his repeated efforts to get through that final barrier but he has kept on hammering.

This time last year at the Olympic trials in Adelaide, Wilson won the national 200m breaststroke title in a huge personal best time of 2:09.90, but the tough Olympic qualifying time of 2:09.64 eluded him.

In the 100m final, he finished third, 0.03sec from second-placed Josh Palmer, who was selected without a qualifying time as the back-up breaststroker for the medley relay team.

Last November, Wilson tried again at the national short-course titles, again winning the 200m breaststroke, in 2:05.08, again improving his personal best time by more than a second, but again it left him an agonising 0.07sec short of the qualifying time.

His preparation had been disrupted as he juggled training with his Year 12 school exams but that did not dim his disappointment.

“The initial feeling was ‘Why me? Why does this keep happening?’ ’’ Wilson said.

“But a week or two later you just have to forget about it and rip into the next thing that comes up and use that as motivation to keep going, which is what I did, with the help of the NSWIS staff. They got me on track to think that way.’’

National head coach Jacco Verhaeren also urged the Blue Mountains teenager to persist, reminding him that Mack Horton failed narrowly to qualify for the national team three times before making his breakthrough in 2014. Two years later he became the Olympic 400m freestyle champion.

“Seeing where Mack was, to where he is now, definitely gives me a bit of motivation,’’ Wilson said as he prepared to swim the 200m breaststroke at the world championships trials in Brisbane today. This time the 18-year-old university sports science student appears primed for success. He has been one of the form Australian swimmers this season at a time when a vacuum has opened up in the men’s breaststroke ranks.

At the Victorian titles in January, he set a personal best time of 2:09.65, which leaves him just 0.01sec short of the Australian team qualifying time, not the three seconds he had to drop last year. He also has the fastest time of the Australian season in the 100m (a personal best of 1:00.23 set at the NSW titles last month).

At the same time, Australia’s established No 1 100m breaststroker, Jake Packard, has been forced out of the trials due to a ­persistent stomach bug.

This time the stars appear to be aligning for Wilson to win his place in the national team.

“I am a bit more confident going in because I don’t have to drop as much time and there’s more opportunity in the 100m,” he said. “I wouldn’t wish it on Jake, and I’m sure he’ll come back ­bigger and better.’’

Wilson’s coach at Sydney Olympic Park, Adam Kable, confirmed that his charge was a much improved swimmer this year.

While he was at school he was travelling from the Blue Mountains to Sydney for training twice a day, rising before 4am to get his swimming in before he started school. But he has now moved to Newington, five minutes from his training pool, and Kable said that had made a huge difference to his work.