Mack Horton bides his time after 1500m defeat in Rome

Mack Horton remains confident for next month’s world titles despite defeat by Olympic 1500m champion in Rome.

National 100m freestyle champion Cameron McEvoy tweeted this picture after meeting the Pope in Rome yesterday, where McEvoy is competing at the Sette Colli Trophy meet.

At the end of the 1500m freestyle final in Rome yesterday, Australia’s contender Mack Horton was 16 seconds and half a lap behind Italy’s reigning Olympic and world champion Gregorio Paltrinieri.

But 21-year-old Horton will still fancy his chances of closing that gap when they meet at the world titles in Budapest next month, and returning Australia to the podium in the event that the national team has dominated like no other in the past century, but not in the past decade.

Before his home crowd at the Sette Colli Trophy, Paltrinieri was inspired, stopping the clock in 14min 49.06sec after kicking away from Horton at the 500m mark and dominating the second half of the race.

Horton finished a distant fourth in 15:05.64, but this is not necessarily a pointer to the way things will pan out in Budapest.

Paltrinieri and Horton are good friends but they are entirely different beasts in the water.

The Italian has a lighter frame, a windmill action (he takes 44 strokes a lap to Horton’s 28) and a history of racing well while in hard work.

Horton is a bigger, more powerful swimmer with a far more efficient freestyle action, but he needs rest to achieve the precision that carried him to the Olympic 400m freestyle title in Rio last year.

In that context, Horton’s performances in Rome have been very promising.

A month out from last year’s Olympic trials, he couldn’t break 3min 49sec for 400m freestyle at the NSW titles, but he dropped to 3:41.65 at the trials. A month out from Budapest, he finished third in the 400m in Rome in 3:47.58, which gives him every chance of reaching his Rio peak form next month.

Over 1500m, he clocked 15:13.98 at the NSW titles, but he is already more than eight seconds ahead of that standard in his world titles preparation, which suggests he has at least a low 14:40s swim in him when tapered.

National head coach Jacco Verhaeren has every confidence that Horton will be there when it counts.

“What we know from Mack is that he can excel when he tapers,’’ Verhaeren said last week.

Not even a blessing from the Pope could lift Horton yesterday. Along with Cameron McEvoy and James Magnussen, he as part of a group of international swimmers who had a personal audience with Pope Francis at the Vatican before the finals session.

McEvoy and Magnussen might have been looking for some divine inspiration ahead of the 100m freestyle final held overnight.

Both sprinters have improved through the European tour and they dipped under 22 seconds.