But Jack placed third that day in June 2023,behind Mollie O’Callaghan (52.48) and Emma McKeon (52.52). And as anybody who has watched a bit of swimming will know,third place does not get you on the plane for an individual race at a major meet.
Australia is poised to beat the USA in an Olympic swimming competition for the first time since Melbourne 1956,according to America’s leading swim commentator.
But the results from the world championships in Fukuoka,Japan,make interesting reading,because Jack’s 52.64 in the trials was faster than the 52.71 that earned Marrit Steenbergen of the Netherlands a world championships bronze.
The other borderline crazy part of the story was what Jack did in Japan. Apart from claiming a 50m freestyle world championships silver,along with several gold and silver relay medals,the 25-year-old posted a 52.28 in her lead-off leg of the 4x100m relay heats. It was a personal best that would have displaced Hong Kong’s Siobhan Haughey (52.49) as silver medallist in the 100m final,behind only gold medallist O’Callaghan (52.16).
It’s a lot of numbers,and these are merely might-have-beens. That is in part because the women’s 100m freestyle is one of Australia’s most hotly contested disciplines,featuring more depth than a competition diving pool. But it is also because Swimming Australia demands such high standards of its elite swimmers,setting internal qualifying benchmarks to ensure it takes only swimmers capable of making major finals.
For instance,swimmers contesting the Paris 2024 trials will have to better the time set by the slowest qualifier for the corresponding final at the 2023 world championships. In the women’s 100m freestyle,that overall eighth-placed semi-final time was 53.67 (the World Aquatics qualifying mark is 53.61).
Shayne Jack posted a time that would have won her a 2023 world championships 100m freestyle bronze – except she didn’t even qualify for the event.Getty Images
Given Emma McKeon won the Tokyo 2020 gold in 51.96,whichever pair makes the top two from a field including McKeon,Jack,O’Callaghan and Cate and Bronte Campbell,will probably have to break 52 seconds. And with Sarah Sjostrom’s 2017 world record sitting at 51.71,whoever heads to Paris will already be halfway to gold. The Australian trials system is exclusive and brutal and heartbreaking in a way most other nations’ systems are not.
Many will not survive this week with their Olympic dreams intact. Those who do,however,will be close to bulletproof. Able to navigate heats,semi-finals and finals throughout a nine-day meet in France,their individual performances pushed to the limit by a high collective benchmark.
So it is with good reason that the Dolphins’ biggest rivals pay such close attention to the Australian trials. Why and Katie Ledecky,Matt Richards and Jack Alexy will all tune in to see the progress of Ariarne Titmus and company. Why American Olympic champion the Dolphins are poised to top the medal table over their fierce American rivals for the first time in 68 years.
It is also why reigning 400m freestyle world champion Sam Short could yet break Ian Thorpe’s 22-year-old Australian record of 3:40.08 before the Olympics have even started (only German Paul Biedermann has ever bettered Thorpe’s time,by 0.01 seconds while wearing a now-outlawed supersuit). And why,with Elijah Winnington breathing down his neck the whole way,Australia might have their next Thorpe-Grant Hackett one-two come the Games.
Australian swimming star Sam Short (centre).Jamila Toderas
“The reason we’ve been so successful as a country – as a small nation sending athletes to perform at an international meet – is because to get on the team is so challenging,” says Dolphins coach Rohan Taylor.
“It’s the same with the Americans to get on the team,because you are talking about coaches and athletes preparing to perform in a moment in time. So Ariarne knows that on July 27 at 8.55pm it’s the final of the 400m free. She can’t swim fast before or after it – has to be then. The trials replicate that,so it’s perfect practice for them to do that.
“I coached for 25 years on the Olympic teams and international teams,so I lived with the same process. But what it did is it makes[better] your coaching skills and your athletes’ skills in being able to deliver the performance in the moment.
“I had a swimmer[Sarah Katsoulis] finish third in 200m breaststroke in Athens[2004] trials,third in the 100m breaststroke of Beijing[2008] trials,and third in the 100m breaststroke in London[2012] trials. So she got three bronze medals at the trials but didn’t get on the Olympic team. It’s a difficult challenge. Very tough. But that’s the selection process.”
Titmus was a picture of demure self-confidence at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre on Sunday,the dual Olympic gold medallist free from the burden of expectation ahead of Monday’s 400m freestyle – and for which she holds the world record.
“We know what it takes to win at an Olympic Games,and that is an advantage,” Titmus said. “You can look into the pressure that the media and the public put on you. You can look at anything in a negative light or a positive light. And if you use the pressure as a positive source,you can turn it into a great ball of energy and make you swim even faster.”
The other ingredient to success is timing. Up to and including the 2016 Games,Swimming Australia traditionally staged its trials two to three months before major meets. But in 2017,after a mixed Rio Olympics campaign during which Australia claimed only three gold medals despite taking eight world No.1 swimmers to Brazil,then-national coach Jacco Verhaeren enacted a change his successor credits with significantly improving the Dolphins’ fortunes at Tokyo 2020.
After adopting the United States’ approach of holding trials five to six weeks out from major meets,Australia won nine gold medals in Tokyo and then topped the gold medal tally in Fukuoka with 13. Taylor credits the shorter turnaround with lessening the risk of sickness and setbacks that can come with a period of rest,and with helping swimmers maintain a high-performance state without the distractions of pre-Games publicity. The result is more “conversions” from trial performances into medals.
“We’ll capture this in a bottle,” Taylor says,“and we’ll go away to[camp in] Europe and we’ll build on it. That’s where I see the benefits of it.
“The Americans,they have their thing,and there’s nothing wrong with looking at what they do and saying,‘I think there’s something there.’
“What it does is,as a coach and an athlete,you make the team here and you got to go straight back into preparing again. So it’s about holding performance into the meet versus trying to reset and go better. Whatever you swim here,just repeat that at the Olympics. If you can just do that,that’s going to give you a really good chance”
2024 Australian swimming trials;exclusive,live and free on Channel Nine and 9Now from Monday June 10. Finals start at 7.30pm AEST each night.
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