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Olympics Swimming News: Aussie Dolphins Swim Team still in for a fantastic finish going into the ninth & final day tomorrow morning with one silver & two bronze medals on Day 8

by Sports Benches

Okay, the Aussie Dolphins Swim Team might not have got away with any gold at all on Day 8 – which wasn’t what we wanted thanks to arch-rivals Team USA. Instead, they only won one silver thanks to Ariarne Titmus in the Women’s 800m Freestyle Final behind Katie Ledecky & two bronze, with Kaylee McKeown unexpectedly following Alex Walsh’s DQ in the Women’s 200m Individual Medley Final, as well as a team effort in the Mixed 4 x 100m Medley Relay Final.

However, we’re still just holding on the Olympics Swimming Medal Tally that tight by one gold medal totalling 7 so far ahead of Team USA going into the ninth and final day’s program tomorrow morning our time.

Oh so close from Arnie who wasn’t far off Katie’s radar all along but not quite enough to close her down on time unfortunately on time. But she did her personal best nonetheless against someone that is already and still an U.S. Olympic swimming legend in none other than now 4 x Women’s 800m Freestyle Olympic Games champion Katie Ledecky. 

Congratulations to Katie as she’s simply unstoppable since the age of 15 that goes way back to London 2012 – that’s all. Looks like she will want to keep on going maybe at least one more towards achieving a homecoming feat when the next Summer Games will be in LA 2028.

For McKeown, she might not have the best race once again this time in the women’s 200m IM Final. She’s happy to accept bronze though when Team USA’s Alex Walsh was disqualified on what has been a huge week for her in Paris thanks to her two gold medals through her specialist backstroke discipline this week including the Women’s 200m Final win yesterday.

But wait, McKeown isn’t done just yet when she later went back into the pool to start off just the backstroke part for the 4 x 100m Mixed Medley Final. It wasn’t the easiest of starts to say off the back of a long night once again while nothing much came from Joshua Yong during the breaststroke stint, but Matthew Temple was not bad though for the butterfly leg despite an underwhelming run earlier on in his specialist Men’s 100m final race earlier this morning before Mollie O’Callaghan freestyled her way home to a team bronze.

Now the ninth and final day’s swimming session will only be Finals same time tomorrow morning with 2-3 gold medals up for grabs since the heats were done the other day. We got Shayna Jack onboard alongside Meg Harris in the women’s 50m Freestyle Final as hoping that the best is yet to come from Jack for gold. 

Plus, we might be in for a 50/50 chance in the Men’s 4 x 100 Medley Relay Final but sure our women are 100% confident on getting the job done for their own 4 x 100m Medley race. After that, the Olympics swimming program would be finished by then with Australia hoping to def. Team USA for the overall Swimming honours once again – this time at Olympic Games level following their World Champs triumph in Fukuoka, Japan just a little over last year.

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2024 Paris Olympic Swimming Day 4 Recap: MCKEOWN PULLS OFF A STUNNING REPEAT PERFORAMANCE, SHATTERING HER OWN OLYMPIC RECORD AT 100M BACKSTROKE!

by Admin

Kudos to our incredible Dolphins – your dedication and spirit shone brightly in Paris day by day!

On the fourth day of competition, 13 Dolphins fought to secure a place in the upcoming finals. The Men’s 200m Butterfly kicked off the day, but Aussie Matt Temple’s time of 1:57.72 wasn’t enough to get him into the semi-finals.

Both the Men’s and Women’s 100m Freestyle events saw Kyle Chalmers (48.07s), William Yang (48.46s), Mollie O’Callaghan (53.27), and Shayna Jack (53.40) qualify for the night sessions.

A Covid-19 diagnosis led to Lani Pallister pulling out of the Women’s 1500m freestyle event, with hopes that this will protect her health so she can compete in the Women’s 4x200m relay on Day 5.

Despite this setback, Moesha Johnson, another Dolphin, advanced to the final of the 1500m event, where she will go up against American star Katie Ledecky on Thursday morning.

Zac Stubblety-Cook’s impressive final 50m push in the Men’s 200m Breaststroke helped him secure a spot in the semi-finals as the second seed, with a time of 2:09.49.

The morning session concluded with the Australian 4x200m Freestyle Relay team, consisting of Zac Incerti, Kai Taylor, Flynn Southam, and Thomas Neill. The team qualified in fourth place (7:05.63), while defending champions Great Britain posted the fastest qualifying time of 7:05.11.

The fourth night at the Paris’ La Défense Arena began with King Kyle’s determination to regain his title in the 100m freestyle event. In the Men’s 100m Freestyle semi-final, Australian newcomer Will Yang competed alongside Chalmers, who made a stunning comeback to win with the second fastest time of 47.58s after starting in fourth place. However, Yang missed out on a spot in the final, finishing 15th overall with a time of 48.42.

The highlight of the night was when our backstroke expert Kaylee McKeown, claimed victory in the Women’s 100m Backstroke Final.

McKeown was in a close race with American swimmers Regan Smith and Katherine Berkoff, but she pulled ahead in the last 25m to defend her Olympic title, setting a new Olympic Record with a winning time of 57.33s. In the Backstroke final, up-and-coming swimmer Dolphin, Iona Anderson, put in a remarkable effort and came in 5th place.

Shayna Jack and Mollie O’Callaghan, who have already won Olympic gold in 2024, qualified for the Women’s 100m freestyle final by finishing 2nd (52.72s) and 3rd (52.75) in the semifinals, just behind Hong Kong’s Siobhan Bernadette Haughey (52.64s).

The Men’s 200m Breaststroke Semi-Final came next, where Zac Stubblety-Cook and Joshua Yong both secured spots in the final. In the evening, Elijah Winnington took an initial lead in the Men’s 800m Final, but was quickly overtaken in the second half of the race by Irish swimmer Daniel Wiffen, who secured his nation’s first gold medal in the pool. Winnington ended up in eighth place, clocking a time of 7:48.36.

Following that, the Men’s 4x200m Freestyle Relay event began. The youthful Australian squad secured the fourth position in the qualifications before the final.

Yet, it was Elijah Winnington who, in the third leg, consolidated the Australian team’s standing in 3rd place behind the USA and Great Britain, following his 800m final swim. Thomas Neill, the anchor of the Australian team, closely followed American Kieran Smith and won the first Bronze Medal for Australia in the games.

The Dolphins Olympic journey is only beginning, be sure to catch Day 5 as more of our Dolphins aim for the top prize!

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2024 Australian Olympic Swimming Trials Day 5: Mollie O’Callaghan’s win in the Women’s 100m Freestyle sprint alongside a few first time Olympic qualifiers sums up Day 5 of 6

by Sports Benches

The second final night of the 2024 Australian Swimming Olympic Trials is full of competition, race wins and another few first-time Olympic qualifying moments all happening at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre. First of all, Joshua Yong had a great swim behind Zac Stubblety-Cook in the Men’s 200m breaststroke final. He’s had a really good week in this discipline having also finished 2nd from the opening night during the 50m sprint behind Sam Williamson, so congrats on his official ticket to Paris.

Same goes to 17-year-old Ella Ramsay who beat the experienced Jenna Strauch (she didn’t qualify in that category when she was a second off the qualifying time) in the last half distance by a comfortable margin of around two seconds in the women’s 200m breaststroke Finals meet. So great to see these swimmers to bounce back with a point to prove ahead of their first rodeos in Paris. Can’t promise what specific goals they should look to get over the line when you got heats and then the semi-finals to begin with, but it’s all about being at their best so they can go from there over the next 3-5 years by looking at Top 3 & then the gold at future events – such as the next Australian Swimming Champs, World Champs, Pan Pacifics and Olympics.

Yes, nothing much has happened to set the world alight over in the other men’s races. However, we did see a fantastic women’s 100m freestyle dash where Mollie O’Callaghan still held on with the win despite no new world record. Joining her on the trip to Paris are Shayna Jack – who will finally be on her way there for the first time – after she finished behind Mollie in 2nd off the back of her doping issues that forced her to sit out for a while (2019-21). Then you’ve got Meg Harris (3rd) joining in to back them up in the women’s relay team alongside Bronte Campbell as this is going to be her 4th straight Olympics campaign at age 32. How good is that as she’s not done racing in the pool just yet!! Five days done, one more to go before we wrap things up to finalise our best Dolphins Swim Team before they head off to Paris in the head up towards July 27.

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2024 Australian Olympic Swimming Trials Day 1: World Records almost broken with excellent competition for 1st in Brisbane

by Sports Benches

We’ve kickstarted the Australian Swimming Olympic Trials last night with a bang with two of our swimmers so very nearly breaking the new world record times while we had some strong competition in the other races that would put the Dolphins in a very good position going into Paris at the end of next month.

Ariarne Titmus was outstanding even though she was on the World Record radar for sometime during her 400m freestyle finals swim. What we hope to see from her is to walk away with both another Olympic gold and another new world record time soon enough. Also a really good moment in that starting race of the night is Lani Pallister finishing behind Arnie in 2nd, who is now on her way to competing in her first Olympic Games campaign. Now there’s some room for improvement having only won just the one 4 x 200m Freestyle team relay race last year at the World Championships in Fukuoka but Lani is there to push her and herself to even better heights. Who knows? We could see a 1-2 finish again after all but at future Olympics & Worlds.

We’ve seen the same for Kaylee McKeown in the women’s 200m Individual Medley where she was too good despite being just under a second off the current world record time being set by Katina Hossku from Hungary back in the 2015 World Championships. More to come from the Queen of backstroke throughout the week including some team relay contributions.

Then in the men’s there’s really huge competition such as that three-way fight in the 100m breaststroke and the 400m freestyle. Yes, Sam Williamson won that race in the breaststroke who finally won a World Championship gold medal off the back of a 50m breaststroke dash earlier this year in Doha. However, Joshua Yong finished just under a second behind Sam in 2nd ahead of Zac Stubblety-Cook in 3rd – this is what we wanted to see in order to for either 2-3 of them to hopefully get a breakthrough Olympic gold medal. 

And we should be in good shape in the Men’s 400m Freestyle and also the long-distance races to come where Elijah Winnington just closed out Sam Short through the end of the wall on what has been a spectacular race to see these two battling hard all along side-by-side. Yes, it would’ve been better if that race would have meant seeing either of them looking to break that world record time. However, competition is what we need for them to test themselves as if they’ve competing v the best of the best swimmers in Paris.

Day 1 done, six more to go on the Road to Paris with the heats in the morning followed by the Finals to decide at night.

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