Commonwealth Games 100-day countdown: Australia’s champion swimmers ready for another pool party
At the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, Australia’s swimmers combined for a record 28 gold medals. Is that number in danger for Birmingham?
A year on from their record breaking feats at the Tokyo Olympics, Australia’s golden swimmers are finally getting the band back together.
Barring a few absentees from the relays, the same Dolphins who collected an unprecedented nine gold medals in the Japanese capital last year will reunite at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, 100 days from now.
The only gold medallists who definitely won’t be there are the three veterans, Cate Campbell, Bronte Campbell and Emily Seebohm, who are each taking a well-earned sabbatical to recharge their bodies for one last shot at more Olympic glory at Paris in 2024.
But the rest of that amazing Aussie team will be heading to England’s West Midlands in late July – including each of the awesome foursome that won individual golds in Tokyo: Ariarne Titmus, Emma McKeon, Kaylee McKeown and Zac Stubblety-Cook.
Australia has always dominated swimming at the Commonwealth Games, winning more than 300 gold medals since the British Empire Games began nearly a century ago.
The importance the current stars have placed on this year’s event is not lost with many of Australia’s record-breaking swimmers, including Titmus and McKeon, deciding to skip this year’s world championships in Budapest to ensure they are at their peak in Birmingham.
“The Commonwealth Games is a tradition and we‘re really big on tradition and history,” Australia’s head coach Rohan Taylor told News Corp.
“It‘s a mini Olympics, in a sense. It’s multi-sport so you get to be with the broader group of Australians and you’re in that village environment.
“Traditionally, it means a lot and we celebrate that. When we talk about athletes gone by, they always mention their Commonwealth Games results.”
At the same time Australia was in lockdown, it was Titmus who helped give the country the lift it desperately needed with her heart-stopping wins over American legend Katie Ledecky.
With Titmus skipping the world titles, which are taking place a month before Birmingham, their ongoing rivalry will have to wait for the next round as the Tasmanian instead sets her sights on adding another four Commonwealth Games golds to the three she won at the Gold Coast in 2018.
Titmus will start as the odds-on favourite to win golds in 200m, 400m, 800m freestyle and the 4x200m relay, with the lure of a world record in the 200m and 400m.
McKeon will be chasing an even bigger medal haul and no-one should discount her chances.
Already Australia’s greatest Olympian with 11 medals (5 gold) in total, including a record seven (4 gold) from Tokyo, the Wollongong whiz is also on track to become Australia’s most prolific Commonwealth Games medallist.
Although she swam in the relays at the 2013 world championships, McKeon’s international career really kicked off at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, where she won four golds.
McKeon won another four golds in 2018 so needs just three more in Birmingham to overhaul Susie O’Neill, Ian Thorpe and Leisel Jones as Australia’s all-time record holder.
She is so highly regarded within the Australian team that the selectors are bending the selection rules to ensure she can compete in Birmingham without burning herself out after the normal four-year swim cycle was thrown into chaos because of Covid-19.
Already at an age when many swimmers hang up their goggles, the 27-year-old is carefully managing her heavy workload in the build up to Paris so is bypassing both the world titles in June and also the Australian trials in May.
With the trials doubling as the selection meet for the Commonwealth Games, normally McKeon would not be considered for Birmingham.
But with Australia allowed three entrants in each individual event at the Commonwealth Games, selectors have decided to make an exception this year by leaving open the option of giving individual Olympic medallists an automatic place if they miss the trials.
“Because everything got tossed up, we‘ve created a mechanism within the selection criteria because we’ve had swimmers taking breaks and undergoing surgery,” Taylor said.
“It‘s a one off but it’s something we’re doing just to try to keep the longevity.”
Australia’s selectors don’t always get it right but this is one decision that is based on commonsense and is the right call for the right time.
Sprint king Kyle Chalmers is also likely to be offered an exemption to sit out the trials and world championships after undergoing surgery so he can make his return to the pool in Birmingham.
But the team’s rising young stars aren’t asking for any favours because they are planning on doing the lot.
In addition to the three events she won in Tokyo, McKeown also has the option to contest the 50m backstroke, 200m individual medley and the mixed medley relay and could be Australia’s biggest winner in Birmingham.
“There‘s a lot of these guys that are really quite hungry that want to get more opportunities,” Taylor said.
“Clearly the standard is less than an Olympics but there‘s still some really, really tough competition so it gives our guys an opportunity to experience that.
‘We believe it‘s a great dress rehearsal for an Olympic Games, but at the same time, the country loves it and our guys love putting the green and gold on, that’s for sure.”
The Commonwealth Games has long been a launching pad for future success of Australian swimmers and Taylor expects Birmingham will follow the same script.
Stubblety-Cook, the only Australian male swimmer to win gold in Tokyo after his unexpected victory in the 200m breaststroke, began his international career at the 2018 Games modestly, missing the podium but better for the experience.
A handful of gold medallists from 2018 are expected to return for 2022, including Mack Horton, Elijah Winnington and Shayna Jack, who is looking to get back on the team after serving a two-year doping ban.
Currently ranked No. 1 in Australia in both 50m and 100m freestyle, the same events McKeon won in Tokyo – Jack is on course to at least make the 4x100m and 4x200m relays, where she could team up with two of the country’s most exciting young talents, Mollie O’Callaghan and Meg Harris, who both got a taste of the big time when they each won golds in Tokyo.
Even without the Campbell sisters and Seebohm, the depth of Australia’s swimmers is so strong right now that the Dolphins are expected to challenge the record 28 golds won in swimming at the Gold Coast four years ago.
That could ultimately depend on how the men’s team do but there are plenty of encouraging signs there too.
While not as strong as Australia’s women, the men boast a good mix of experienced campaigners as well as a handful of young emerging swimmers, including Olympic bronze medallists Brendon Smith and Thomas Neill and future stars Isaac Cooper and Sam Short.
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