Chalmers 47.75 Grants 3rd Crack At Olympic 100 Podium; 4×1 Slots For Yang, Southam, Cartwright
Gold in Rio, silver by 0.06 in Tokyo and now Kyle Chalmers heads to Paris with a 47.75 trials win over 100m freestyle in the bag knowing that he will need to axe the best part of a second off that for a medal in Paris this summer.
On day four at Australian Trials in Brisbane, Chalmers, the 2016 Olympic champion, won it on the way out and sealed it on the way home. A good result, given that Chalmers developed a lower back injury 12 days ago and has had four cortisone injections in order to be able to race in Brisbane. recovery time ahead on the way to Paris.
Additional reporting from Nicole Jeffery in Brisbane
Will Yang was closest on 48.08, just 0.02sec shy of the solo cut, third place to 19-year-old Flynn Southam in 48.11, with Jack Cartwright making his first Olympic team at 25 as fourth man home in 48.40 for the last of the guaranteed slots in the Dolphin 4x100m free relay.
Yang and Southam were a snap at the turn, the 0.03sec gap at the end a matter of luck on the breeze in the grand scheme of swimming speed.
Kai Taylor, 48.57 and Zac Incerti, 48.73, completed the sub-49 club as potential reserve picks for Paris. Incerti’s time was dropped by a snap in the B final: Cody Simpson and Matt Temple both on 48.67 but too slow in heats to make the top 8 cut for the showdown.
Brisbane Results in full / Event Page
Chalmers, now 25, at his fastest is that 47.08 he clocked for silver in Tokyo, the Australian record of 47.04 still in the hands of 50m king Cameron McEvoy from trials in 2016. There are no guarantees, neither up nor down in the scale of thumbs.
That’s the kind of speed it will take to make the 100m podium, the World record in the hands of China’s Pan Zhanle at 46.80 leading China’s winning 4x100m free quartet to gold at the intercalated global gathering in February this year when he clipped the 46.86 of Romania’s David Popovici from 2022.
Today, the top three were fastest out and fastest home:
22.81; 47.75 (24.94) Chalmers
23.18; 48.08 (24.90) Yang
23.18; 48.11 (24.93) Southam
Chalmers – “the back is the controller of everything, every aspect of your day to day life, but obviously hugely in the pool on the start, the turn, swimming, it impacts it massively”
Kyle Chalmers explained the backdrop to the cortisone injections when told Nicole Jeffery and other reporters in Brisbane: “I’ve had back problems – I’ve really dealt with them through 2018-2019. I’ve got bulged discs in my back and a bit of a degenerative spine. So I have now had 10 cortisones to my back throughout my career, but um, yeah…
” … on Saturday, last week, like 12 days ago, I decided – I’ve been doing some landscape labouring up on the Sunny Coast – and I decided I wouldn’t go to work on the Friday and I’d rest for trials and kinda just spent a day lying on the couch, which my body’s clearly not used to and it got pretty stiff.
“And then Saturday morning, I tried to do a dive and it just all spasmed and locked up, so I saw physios and doctors and the best thing I could do was to get four cortisones in my lower back and try to get moving again. So yeah, really hard thing probably to go through so close to trials. It makes you change your stroke completely.
“Obviously I’ve had ankle and shoulder problems in my career, but when you have one of them, you can kind of use your other three limbs to get around it. Whereas the back is the controller of everything, every aspect of your day to day life, but obviously hugely in the pool on the start, the turn, swimming, it impacts it massively. So I’m just grateful to be here racing today and be back on the mend. I know that I can get it right in six weeks’ time but having only 10 days is probably not a huge amount of time.
Kyle Chalmers – and the trouble with backs … – Photo by Patrick B. Kraemer / MAGICPBK
Asked how the back had felt today, Chalmers replied: “Today’s actually the best day it’s felt. When I first got here who was terrible, I’ve been seeing the physio before racing, after racing. So I’ve been seeing the physio four times a day since I’ve been here just trying to loosen everything off and activate everything so that I’m able to swim and yeah, I think I’ve put on a pretty brave face to be able to get through it, but it’s definitely been quite challenging just getting in and out of bed and starting the day and it’s just something that kind of sticks in the back of your mind.
“The good thing is that mentally and emotionally I’m in a very, very good spot. So I think that I’m able to rise above the adversity and the challenges that have been thrown at me. And that’s only because of you know, it’s happened so many times throughout my career that I’ve had to rise above something so I know that all I had to do so I was swim two laps in the swimming pool. It’s really not that hard in the big scheme of things. So mentally, it hasn’t been too bad. It’s more just the physical pain of it.
Will Yang, who has made a return to top training this year after a cancer scare, surgery and recovery, was next to talk to the media and was asked what it mean to him to be on the team. He said: “Absolutely everything because this is also my third Olympic trials, and I’ve been trying this for a very long time, and especially what I went through last year. I had about six months recovery from my spine surgery (to remove a benign tumour).
“I only started training mid January and yeah, I just did everything I possibly can, train with great attitude, great focus. I don’t know what really to say I’m bit overwhelmed at this moment right now. I’m just very happy with my result and also everyone else’s.”
In other finals
In the women’s 200m butterfly, Elizabeth Dekkers and Abbey Connor claimed tickets to Paris with respective times of 2:06.01 and 2:06.82, the latter a touch down on a heats time of 2:06.43.
Third place went to Bella Grant in 2:08.86 after she faded down the last length, the tussle having flowed like this:
28.70; 1:00.73 (32.03) 1:32.45 (31.72) 2:06.01 (33.56) Dekkers
28.51; 1:00.58 (32.07) 1:33.13 (32.55) 2:06.82 (33.69) Connor
28.41; 1:00.13 (31.72) 1:33.23 (33.10) 2:08.86 (35.63) Grant
Dekkers has the all-comers record in Australia, at 2:05.20. Anything between that and Jess Schipper‘s national mark of 2:03.41 from 2009 would be in with a podium shout in Paris. Dekkers is Commonwealth 200 ‘fly champion and claimed silver at the 2023 World Championships when last the best of the best in the world gathered for global long-course battle.
Meanwhile, Connor was set to retire at 17. She persevered and is now about to be confirmed an Olympian.
In the men’s 200m medley, the Paris cut at 1:57.23, 19-year-old Will Petric, of Nunawading, fell an agonising 0.32sec shy with a 1:57.54 victory ahead of Brendon Smith‘s 1:58.12. Third place went to Lee Se-Bom in 2:00.11.
But listen to what Petric had to say…
“Yeah, it’s annoying [missing the qualifying time] but you know Australia has always had tremendous success overseas and the QT must have something to do with it,” said the pragmatic Petric. “I don’t want to go there and not make a final, I want to go make a final so hitting that QT instills that confidence I can make finals overseas.”