Australian Championships: Aussie swimmers return to the pool and face a long road to LA Games 2028
The Paris pool party is officially over for the Aussie swimmers, as the Dolphins returned for the national championships, with little time to waste to prepare for a USA team in their home pool.
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The Paris pool party is over for Australia’s swimmers.
It is back to work for everyone because the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are just a little more than three years away and there’s little time to waste.
The Dolphins were the pride of the nation in the French capital last year, giving the trash-talking United States swim team the fright of their lives by finishing second on the table with 19 medals, including seven golds.
But an Olympic Games in American waters is a much different proposition.
The US will be primed and have already been given a huge leg up with the recent inclusion of 50m events in backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly.
The Aussies might be the best in the world in freestyle but the Americans and Chinese are in a different league in the form strokes because the Dolphins don’t have the same depth as swim nations with bigger populations.
This week’s Australian championships, taking place in Brisbane, are a sobering reminder of the enormous challenge the Dolphins face restocking the cupboards before the most eagerly-awaited swim meet in Olympic history at LA’s SoFi Stadium.
With a number of Australian swimming’s headline acts missing in action this week, including Kyle Chalmers, Ariarne Titmus and Sam Short, there’s a strong reliance on the other heavy hitters that have led the national team so well over the last two Olympic cycles.
Kaylee McKeown, the only Australian to win four individual Olympic gold medals after completing the women’s backstroke double in Tokyo and Paris, withdrew from the 200m individual medley on Monday to focus on pet events, backstroke. Ella Ramsay won in the absence of McKeown.
But Cam McEvoy, who won the 50m freestyle in Paris, took out the 50m butterfly while Mollie O’Callaghan, who won three golds in France, sped away from her rivals to comfortably win the 100m freestyle in 53.12, the second fastest time in the world this year behind Italy’s Sara Curtis.
“I gotta give myself a bit of a break, it’s been such a big past few months, filled with a lot of tears and a lot of things I’ve had to overcome,” an emotional O’Callaghan said.
“But, at the end of the day, it’s just about taking off what I need to do in the race rather than thinking about the outcome, think about the process.
“So to come and do this time, it is good to know that I’m on the right track back but at the same time, I still have that determination to fully get back into training and to be better than what I was before.”
And middle-stance star Elijah Winnington, the 2022 world champion and 2024 Olympic medallist, cruised to victory in the men’s 400m freestyle 3:45.97, 4.5 sec outside his lifetime best.
The big guns all looked in reasonable form so early in the season but no-one will be carried away with their times because the Australian championships no longer carry the same status they once did because the trials, which typically take place in June, have become the main focus event on the domestic calendar.
With the world championships in Singapore looming as the benchmark for 2025, the Dolphins have already been warned that their foreign rivals are already raising the bar.
Last week, Germany Olympic champion Lukas Martens smashed the longstanding world record for 400m freestyle.
And Canadian teen sensation Summer McIntosh, unrivalled as the best female swimmer in the world, has switched coaches and joined Bob Bowman, the legendary mentor of the GOAT Michael Phelps and French national hero Leon March.
Intent on expanding her program even after winning three golds and silver in Paris, the big worry for the Aussies is that she has Titmus, McKeown and O’Callaghan in her sights.
Originally published as Australian Championships: Aussie swimmers return to the pool and face a long road to LA Games 2028
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