Double-double, toil, no trouble: Kaylee McKeown in sight of legend status

Kaylee McKeown is within reach of a rare Olympic feat. But her curiously blank expression after claiming gold isn’t from a lack of emotion. It’s just her eyesight.

Kaylee McKeown with her gold medal from the 100m backstroke final. Picture: Getty Images

Kaylee McKeown’s charming, curiously blank expression after her triumphs isn’t from a lack of emotion. It’s because she’s trying to work out what the scoreboard says. Her eyesight isn’t exactly 20/20 and she’s the last person to know if she’s first to the wall at the Paris Olympics.

History in the making? We’ll see. Eventually, so will she. McKeown won a sizzling 100m backstroke final from American Regan Smith to continue Australia’s blazing display at La Defense Arena. Peak performances at peak moments, the disaster of the London Games a distant memory, McKeown likely to go back-to-back on her back.

She tends to be lost in the mix among the Dolphins’ superstars because by the time she competes we’re swooning over Ariarne ­Titmus and Mollie O’Callaghan. She’s never quite received the same bouquets of adulation and attention but that may be about to change.

We’ll see. Television viewers, spectators and her opponents know the results before McKeown. It takes a little while for the scoreboard to come into focus. She looks baffled and underwhelmed. Really, she’s only ­unaware.

McKeown celebrates after winning gold. Picture: Michael Klein

She wears prescription glasses out of the pool. Doesn’t want the irritation of contacts in the water. If she does backstroke like a bat out of hell, she’s sort of blind as one, too. At the best of times, backstrokers have only a vague understanding of their opponents’ whereabouts. All McKeown can really see is the roof she’s raising.

“I kind of like that because you’re in your own race when you’re racing backstroke,” she says. “You can see arms and splash off the turns, but the ­majority of the time you can’t see much at all unless you’re right next to the person. Obviously when it’s a really close race, you have no idea. Sometimes you get a nice surprise and sometimes you don’t.”

Early on Saturday morning (AEST) in the 200m backstroke, McKeown will attempt to join one of the truly elite Olympic swimming clubs, the double-double club. Only six swimmers – Michael Phelps, Yana Klochkova and Alexander Popov among them – have defended two Olympic titles.

Phelps even took it one step further by winning both the 100m and 200m butterfly races and the 200m and 400m individual medleys at the Athens Games in 2004 – and then repeating the feat four years later in Beijing.

McKeown’s the world record holder in the 200m and will take some stopping. She would become the first Australian Olympian in any sport to claim four individual gold medals, surpassing swimmers Dawn Fraser, Murray Rose, Shane Gould, Ian Thorpe, Ariarne Titmus and track sprinter Betty Cuthbert.

But Titmus could join her 24 hours later, if she can go one better than the silver medal she won in the 800m in Tokyo.

Big names are in McKeown’s sights. “I knew it would come down to that last 25 metres,” she said after her pulsating, late-charging 100m ­victory.

“It’s something that I’ve been practising for and something that the Americans and myself are really good at – finishing our races strong,” she says.

“It was just going to be whoever had it in that last five or 10 metres.

“It’s one race at a time, I’ve ticked off three boxes so far. and there’s a few more to go ­hopefully.”

Smith says: “Kaylee is one of one. She is an absolutely ­incredible racer and she knows what to do when it matters.”

McKeown’s gold was Australia’s fourth through the first four days of competition. A dazzling strike rate. Three silver medals and one bronze have been accrued on the side. A complete turnaround from the dramas, controversies and failures of London 12 years ago: one gold among a small haul of 10 medals. And there was the Stilnox scandal after six ­swimmers – Eamon Sullivan, Matt ­Targett, James Magnussen, James Roberts, Tommaso D’Orsogna and Cameron McEvoy – took the drug in a pre-Games bonding session.

Paris is cementing Australia’s women as a golden generation. Titmus and O’Callaghan were already superstars, but so’s McKeown. We can all see that now.

“I never go into an international stage thinking I’m going to come out with a world record or a PB (personal best) or a gold medal,” McKeown says.

“So any time I get my hand on the wall and those things come along with it, it’s always a nice little surprise and a bit of a pat on the back for the training that I have done. Sometimes when you think too far in front, you can get greedy.

“I don’t think people understand how cutthroat it can be to get yourself on to the Olympic team, let alone standing up behind the blocks at an Olympic Games. I know that I’m probably in the peak of my sport now, so I’m really trying to enjoy where I’m at.”