Mollie O’Callaghan has become a golden hat-trick as she leads the 4x100m mixed relay quartet to Australia’s first world milestone at this year’s world swimming championships.
And Kaylee McKeown has underlined her position as one of Australia’s canopy swimmers with her first win at the World Championships in the 200m backstroke in Budapest on a penultimate milestone day for the Dolphins.
Queenslander Kiah Melverton also came into play, getting the silver behind the ever-amazing Katie Ledecky, who on Friday took home her fifth consecutive 800m freestyle crown with another spectacular victory.
Still, not even the incredible American was able to surpass the performance of the day of the Dolphins ’overloaded freestylers quartet: Jack Cartwright, Kyle Chalmers, Madi Wilson and O’Callaghan, as they set a new world record for 3 minutes and 19.38 seconds. in the final act of the day.
This shaved two hundredths of a second of the record set by the United States in the last worlds in Gwangju, South Korea, in July 2019, when they flew Canada (3: 20.61) and the United States (3:21, 09).
“It’s crazy,” Rio Olympics 100-meter freestyle champion Chalmers declared. “You have the world champion (O’Callaghan, 52.03 seconds), a girl who probably would have won the silver if she had been in the race (Wilson, 52.25), Jack (Cartwright, 48.12) returning from shoulder surgery for swimming. an amazing first division … I think we will always be hard to beat. “
They were especially hard to beat thanks to Chalmers ’stunning comeback, scoring at 46.98.
“I’m very happy, very proud of this team, it’s an amazing result,” said O’Callaghan, who now has five championship medals, including three golds.
The place of pride had previously gone to three-time Olympic champion McKeown, who had previously won five world platforms, including two already this week in Budapest, but only broke her golden duck with a triumph by biting her nails.
He just won with one last push for the wall, winning in 2: 05.08, with American Phoebe Bacon just one fingernail behind in 2: 05.12.
“Having a gold medal is pretty spectacular, I wasn’t expecting to be here earlier this year, so going out with two individual podiums is amazing,” said McKeown, who also won silver in the 200m. individual medley.
“I was very nervous about coming tonight after last year, but it’s an amazing feeling.”
It was also a night of great excitement for McKeown, who dedicated his medal to his late father.
“You will often see me before my warm-up, I will sit by the pool and have a moment for myself. I believe in my little way that it is there every step of the way, so that is my gratitude, ”he said.
The 20-year-old had skipped her best event, the 100 m backstroke, in which she holds the world record and is Olympic champion, to tackle the combination, a decision that had aroused a few eyebrows.
But she was determined not to miss her other Olympic discipline and timed her drive for victory with a split-second accuracy.
Bacon, the fastest runner-up, broke to open a 0.64-second lead halfway before McKeown gradually dragged her into the third long and then began to pass in the final 10 meters.
No one had a chance against Ledecky in the 800m, as she became the first athlete to win a discipline five times in a row and won a 22nd world medal.
He won by more than 10 seconds in 8: 08.04, but Melverton (8: 18.77) swam the race of his life for silver, his first individual overall medal in the 50m pool.