Mack Horton takes on big program at Budapest world titles

Olympic gold medallist Mack Horton plans to swim the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle at the world titles.

Mack Horton wins the 1500m freestyle at the Australian swimming championships in Brisbane in April.

Former champion Grant Hackett was the last Australian to take on the challenge of contesting every freestyle event from 200m to 1500m at the world titles, in 2005, but reigning Olympic 400m freestyle champion Mack Horton expects to be the next in Budapest next month.

Distance specialist Horton was the surprise winner of a stacked 200m freestyle final at the national trials in April in Brisbane, powering home late to upstage fellow Olympic gold medallist Kyle Chalmers and Commonwealth champion Cameron McEvoy

At that stage, Horton wasn’t sure if he wanted to add the shorter event to his world titles schedule, for fear of hurting his performance in the 1500m freestyle at the end of the week.

However national head coach Jacco Verhaeren has confirmed that Horton has been entered in all four freestyle events (200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m) and the 21-year-old said before leaving for Europe at the weekend he was eager to stretch himself in international waters.

The last time he took on that program internationally was at the 2013 world junior championships, where he won five gold medals.

“I am keen to do it in Budapest, it will be like taking it back to the junior worlds, so there’s no need to over-complicate it,’’ Horton said.

His winning time in Brisbane, a personal best of 1min 46.83sec, won’t scare any of the specialists (Sun Yang won the Olympic title last year in 1:44.65) but Horton believes he can be competitive, particularly if the pace is slow early. He will use the same strategy he did at the trials, stay in touch with the speedsters in the first 100m and “try to swim over them at the end’’.

After last year’s Rio Olympics, Horton was concerned that doing two fast 200m races in the 4x200m freestyle relay had flattened him for the 1500m, but he said his coach Craig Jackson had now adjusted his training to help him cope with the divergent demands of the different events.

“I don’t think I was prepared for it in Rio, but now I feel like I am,’’ Horton said.

“If we do eight kilometres of endurance in a training session now, I start off doing 50s max to get my speed going.’’

Horton hopes the interspersing of sprint work with his endurance training will not only prepare him to swim the 200m, but will enable him to change gears more easily during longer races, a tactical weapon he may need to fight off the likes of his Chinese rival Yang.

The 1500m remains his priority. Despite his 400m victory in Rio, he still regards the metric mile as his pet event and it irks him that he has not yet produced a truly world-class 1500m performance at a major championship.

The benchmark in that event is his friend and occasional training partner, Olympic champion Gregorio Paltrinieri, and he will get the chance to test himself against the Italian at the Sette Colli Trophy meet in Rome later this month.

He will warm up for that meeting by contesting the Mare Nostrum series, which starts in Monaco this weekend, before moving to Barcelona (June 13-14) and Canet in France (June 17-18).

“I’ve done lots of good uninterrupted work since trials and the Mare Nostrum meets will give me a gauge of where I am,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, Verhaeren has confirmed that Alex Graham will join Horton in the 200m freestyle in Budapest, following the withdrawal of Chalmers, who is scheduled for heart surgery this week. Queensland teenager Jack Cartwright will replace Chalmers in the sprint.