Australia has two gold medals and fell agonisingly short of a third in a thrilling first night at the world championships in Singapore on Sunday.
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Up first, teenagers Milla Jansen and Olivia Wunsch stepped up to help Australia to glory in the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay before a surging finish from Kyle Chalmers saw the men home in stunning fashion to make it back-to-back wins.
It was a new-look women’s relay team to the one that won Australia’s fourth consecutive gold medal at the Paris Olympics, with Mollie O’Callaghan and Meg Harris the two experienced swimmers along with the emerging Jansen and Wunsch.
O’Callaghan and Harris put Australia in a strong position after the first two legs but from there America was expected to finish on top.
Instead, Jansen helped bring the gold home while Wunsch “swum herself right up there with the very best Australia has seen” as Mat Thompson put it in commentary for Channel Nine.
“That was extraordinary,” he added.
“It’s spine-tingling stuff. They are Australia’s golden girls… there’s something magic about this team. It doesn’t matter who comes into it. They’re carrying a legacy.”
Four-time Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus, meanwhile, called it an “unbelievable swim” by 19-year-old Wunsch, who made her Olympic debut in Paris as a heat swimmer for the relay team.
“Her composure. She could have got overwhelmed with how fast Tori Huske went out,” Titmus said on Channel Nine.
“But she stood her ground. She knew her race plan. It was almost like she was a bit airborne. She was sitting so high in the water those last 15 metres.
“She put her head down. She didn’t take a breath for almost the last 10 metres and that’s what got her to the wall first. Unbelievable swim by Olivia Wunsch at the end there.”
The gold medals kept coming as the men also pulled off the upset in their 4x100m freestyle relay, beating the highly-fancied Americans with a championships record time of 3:08.97.
A 46.5 second anchor leg from Chalmers saw Australia storm home in what Titmus described as an “incredible effort” considering the level of competition.
“The Americans on the men’s side tonight were the ones to beat,” she said.
“Out of the top nine swimmers in the world this year in the men’s 100 freestyle, four of them are American. And so to think that we won tonight, incredible effort by the boys.”
SHORT PIPPED BY 0.02 SECONDS FOR GOLD, REVEALS FAMILY TRAGEDY
Australia could have finished the night with three golds, however Germany’s Olympic champion Lukas Maertens won a thrilling 400m freestyle gold by pipping Australia’s Sam Short by 0.02sec.
Maertens, who broke the world record earlier this year, came home in 3min 42.35sec after a fierce battle with Short, the 2023 world champion.
South Korea’s Kim Woo-min, the reigning world champion, was third in 3:42.60. Maertens was the favourite for the title after breaking the world record in Stockholm in April, a mark that had stood since 2009.
But Short fought him every stroke of the way, losing out after an incredible tussle to the finish.
“I thought we were going a bit faster, to be honest,” Short told Channel 9 after the race.
“It’s a high-pressure event. Two fast 400s in a day, really hard. I won two years ago by 0.02, and I just lost by 0.02. I’m happy to be back on the podium after a hard last year, so I can’t complain.
“I didn’t even know how I was going to go. All staging camp, or at least 75 per cent of it, I was in quarantine, I had Covid. A lot of mental strength that I’ve learned this year, I’m just stoked.”
Short later went on to reveal that his aunty had recently passed away, dedicating his performance to her.
“This year has been really hard,” he said.
“No one really knows everything. I want to dedicate that performance to my aunty who just passed away a couple of weeks ago… it’s been quite hard for my family recently… however bad I was hurting there, nowhere near as bad as her battling cancer the last 10 years.”
The result gave Maertens his first world title after claiming Olympic gold in Paris last year.
He followed that up by setting a new world record of 3:39.96, shaving 0.11sec off the mark achieved by fellow German Paul Biedermann at the world championships in Rome in July 2009.
Biedermann’s mark of 3:40.07 was achieved wearing a polyurethane swimsuit that has since been banned in competition.
Short missed out on an Olympic medal in the event in Paris, finishing fourth. Australia’s Elijah Winnington, the Paris Olympics silver medallist, surprisingly failed to qualify for the final.
Short finished fastest in the morning heats ahead of Maertens.
ARNIE RIVAL OBLITERATES THE FIELD TO WIN GOLD
Elsewhere, Australians know the name Summer McIntosh by now and the Canadian swimming senation obliterated her rivals to win the world 400m women’s freestyle gold, with American great Katie Ledecky third.
The 18-year-old McIntosh romped home in 3min 56.26sec, nearly two seconds clear of China’s Li Bingjie, who was followed by Ledecky in bronze.
It was the world record holder’s first world title in the event as she pursues five individual golds in Singapore.
On the opening night of the meet, McIntosh and Ledecky, 28, renewed their rivalry from the Paris Olympics last summer.
They will also meet in the 800m freestyle, billed as the most eagerly anticipated race of the championships.
McIntosh took the lead early on and never looked back to demolish the rest of the field, pulling increasingly clear as the race progressed.
McIntosh came to Singapore in red-hot form.
She smashed the 400m freestyle world record at the Canadian trials in 3:54.18 in June.
The three-time Olympic gold medallist sliced more than a second off the previous world record of 3:55.38 set by Australian Ariarne Titmus at the 2023 world championships.
Olympic champion Titmus is not in Singapore because she is taking a season off before she dives back in to prepare for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
McIntosh won gold in the 200m butterfly, 200m medley and 400m medley at the Paris Olympics. She took silver in the 400m free.
The McIntosh family’s passion for sport runs deep: their mother Jill competed in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and older sister Brooke is a top pairs figure skater.
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