Faster 100m tells golden boy to lift his game

Olympic champion Kyle Chalmers the goalposts have been shifted.

Caeleb Dressel celebrates winning the gold medal in the men’s 100m butterfly — his third of the meeting. Picture: Getty Images.

As a former junior Australian football star, Olympic gold medallist Kyle Chalmers knows when the goalposts have shifted and he saw it happen in his absence at the world championships in Budapest last week.

Chalmers was forced to withdraw from the Australian team for the meet to have surgery to correct a long-standing heart condition but he was a more-than-interested observer when the 100m freestyle title was decided. American Caeleb Dressel won the glamour sprint in 47.17sec, half a second faster than Chalmers’s winning time in Rio last year, on the way to winning three individual titles, the 50m and 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly, and a swag of relay gold medals.

“You look at Caeleb’s progression, he was maybe 47.8 last year and has dropped 0.7 of a second,’’ 19-year-old Chalmers said.

“I didn’t get to race this year so I don’t know if my progression would have been the same. I definitely know that I’m going to have to train a lot harder if I want to be world standard again and potentially I’m going to have to train for multiple events.

“If I’m to get to that level I’m going to have to start training for the 200m more so I can hold my body through the week and be fit enough to match it with guys like that. I’m going to do everything I can to get myself back to where I was and even faster, but I don’t know when that’s going to be.

“I’m not going to put any pressure on myself to come up at Comm Games and go 47.1 like Caeleb’s just gone. But my goals haven’t changed. I still want to be the best athlete I can be and I know what I have to do. There are a lot of areas I can improve on to get to that level.”

Chalmers had already spread his wings to the 200m — he finished second at the national trials before his heart condition forced him out of the team — and he is keen to join his fellow teenagers in a new-look men’s 4x200m freestyle relay that just missed the medals in Budapest.

“I would love to swim a 4x200m relay,” he said.

“Watching the team last night with Clyde Lewis and Jack Cartwright who are two guys around the same age as me, it would be an amazing team to be a part of because they swam so well. It would be amazing to win the 4x200 on home soil next year (at the Commonwealth Games) and I think we are a good shot at that.

“Britain (who won the world title) next year break up into their different countries and we do have a lot of good 200m freestylers, it’s just about getting it right on the day.”

He is similarly enthusiastic about the prospects of the 4x100m freestyle relay and joining his age peer Cartwright, who he has raced for years in the junior ranks.

“To see Jack go 47.9, it’s an amazing achievement,’’ he said.

“We did junior worlds together, I knew he was going to swim well here just looking at him in trials. I thought he would be one to look out for so for him to stand up and do it was amazing.”

Australia now has five men capable of swimming 47 seconds (Cameron McEvoy, Chalmers, Cartwright, James Magnussen and James Roberts) who will be vying for three individual positions in the national team. That won’t give them any wriggle room at the national trials in February.

“I think everyone will be prepped at Comm Games trials so I am going to have to be on my game to get that spot,’’ Chalmers said.

“It would be awesome to win that on home soil.”

Chalmers had surgery to correct his heart condition seven weeks ago and was back in the water two weeks later.

He is in Budapest as a guest of his sponsor adidas and will return to competition at a charity event in Rome next week and then at the World Cup event in Eindhoven in the Netherlands.

Then it’s back home for some “serious training”.