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Olympics Swimming News: Kyle Chalmers & Zac Stubblety-Cook the only two silver medalists for the Aussie Dolphins Swim Team in Day 5 at Paris La Defense Arena

by Sports Benches

Well, no gold medals on Day 5 from the Aussie Dolphins Swim Team, but at least they are still leading the Olympics swimming medal tally by just one gold medal ahead of Team USA, who currently has three in the bag with four days to go.

First of all, it wasn’t the swim both Mollie O’Callaghan and Shayna Jack wanted in the women’s 100m Freestyle Final where they finished 4th & 5th respectively. Now this is Mollie O’s first Olympics for those who wants to jump the gun on her with high expectations to walk away for the gold as she didn’t have a good start. Although she was not far towards the end of the wall when it comes to an outside shot for the Top 3, but at least nowhere near the record time ahead of everyone I guess. 

The same goes to Shayna having gone from a long, long way via her two-year doping ban before she was able to swim competitively once again a few years ago where she’s an excellent team player. She too maybe within reach at least the Top 3 at one stage especially in the 1st 50m but then she was languishing towards the back end during the last 50m half sprint.

If 1-2 medals would make you smile for the Aussies, how about “The King” Kyle Chalmers who finished 2nd in the Men’s 100m Freestyle Final sprint, as well as Zac Stubblety-Cook (also a silver medalist) in the Men’s 200m breaststroke Final.

For Stubblety-Cook, you can’t overcome winning such a strong French crowd where Leon Le Marchand won that race comfortably with the gold medal. However, at least he was within the Top 3 radar all along which wasn’t bad. The only thing he could’ve done better that Zac just couldn’t close down on the Frenchman when he was around two secs off the pace there. 

And long live King Kyle with another Olympic gold, even though he fell short to China’s Pan Zhanle who dominated this meet with the new world record time. It wasn’t an easy race when you got so many world-class swimmers alongside him, especially when he didn’t have the best of starts. He did have the best finish though where it might not be enough to catch Zhanle on time by just 1 second but boy happy to see him collect the silver.

So where to now going into Day 6? Looks like there will be two gold medal opportunities up for grabs for the Aussies in the of holding onto this Olympic swimming medal tally. One will be both Liz Dekkers and Abbey Connor in the Women’s 200m Butterfly Final and the other would possibly be the Women’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Team Relay events.

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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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One silver by the 4 x 100 Women’s Medley Relay Team and Meg Harris’s joint bronze in the 50m Freestyle Final wraps up Australia’s run in 2nd at the 2022 World Swimming Championships

by Sports Benches

The Dolphins may have collected just the silver and bronze on the final day of this year’s World Swimming Championships, but they still finished 2nd on this medal tally alone with six gold, nine silver and two bronze at a total of 17 medals.

Nice seeing Meg Harris share the joint bronze medal with Team USA’s Erika Brown at 24:38 in the Women’s 50m Freestyle Final. She was 3rd fastest overall from start to finish – including a great start in her heat & also she finished 2nd in the 2nd semi.

Then we saw the 4 x 100 Women’s Medley Relay Team wrap up 2nd after a fantastic start earlier yesterday in the heats. Yes, they couldn’t nail down Team USA on time for the gold when building an early lead would’ve gave them an extra edge towards their arch rivals. However, the girls swam really well within the Top 3 nonetheless from Kaylee McKeown, Jenna Strauch, Brianna Throssell & Mollie O’Callaghan.

Overall, it’s great to see our Dolphins finish off 2nd. We have a few of the world’s fastest swimmers that is developed & produced right here with freestyler Mollie O’Callaghan, backstroker Kaylee McKeown, and breaststroker Zac Stubblety-Cook. Although Elijah Winnington’s opening day gold in the Men’s 400m Freestyle Final may not have translated everywhere else, but surely he can bounce back next time.

And we have plenty of bright and talented youngsters coming through the ranks who is tipped for massive potential. They are ready to make history in collecting gold medals like O’Callaghan, McKeown & Stubblety-Cook – before they look to hopefully end Team USA’s long-running dominance up top & take over the world themselves regardless if its the WC and/or Olympic medal tally.

Thanks to Budapest, Hungary, for being such a great host once again for the second time that goes back to five years ago in 2017. For now, bring on the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England, next month, as well as renewing our arch-rivalry with Team USA back home in Sydney this August.

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Mollie O’Callaghan & Zac Stubblety Cook’s outstanding swims in their respective Finals puts Australia back into 2nd on Day 6 of the 2022 World Swimming Championships

by Sports Benches

We’re back into 2nd now on the medal tally for the Dolphins Swim Team, having snatched another two gold medals today thanks to Mollie O’Callaghan and Zac Stubblety-Cook after Day 6 of the 2022 World Swimming Championships.

Stubblety-Cook may not had the early momentum needed to stay ahead when he was battling outside the Top 3. The gamble to go all in the last 50m paid off however, when he came from behind with less than 100m to go before he trumped the whole field on the way home that secured his first World Championship Gold Medal in the Men’s 200m breaststroke.

Same goes to O’Callaghan over in the Women’s 100m Freestyle who was also initially off the pace. But likewise to what Stubblety-Cook did in the last-half, she began to rebound just in time up front towards a photo finish, and she has done it to upsurge Sweden’s Sarah Sjoestroem and Team USA’s Tori Huske for the gold she really wanted which is absolutely stunning.

Then there’s more than just the two outstanding swimmers on display where they took home another two silver medals.

Excellent job from Zac Incerti with the turnaround once he took over the baton from Elijah Winnington. His excellent spell in the last 100m puts them in 2nd after Stage 2 of the Men’s 4 x 200m Freestyle Relay Final; That helped him paved an easy pathway for Sam Short & Mack Horton to bring it all the way home where they finished 2nd.

And how good was Jenna Strauch in the Women’s 200m breaststroke? Although she couldn’t hold off Team USA’s Lily King towards the very end of the wall, but it’s still an excellent swim – especially in the 2nd half where she caught up side-by-side to the frontrunners just in time for the climax of this race.

The hard work isn’t over going into the final two days with Kaylee McKeown in the Women’s 200m backstroke Final, Kiah Melverton in the Women’s 800m Freestyle Final & Matt Temple in the Men’s 100m butterfly Final – plus the Mixed 4 x 100 Freestyle Relay if possible tomorrow. Initially, Lani Pallister was set to compete in the Women’s 800m Freestyle tomorrow with Melverton for the gold but then COVID caught her which means she has to withdraw from the running & sit for at least a week in isolation.

For now, what a day for O’Callaghan & Stubblety-Cook who made our Aussies very proud on the pool.

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Another silver for the Dolphins Swim Team on Day 5 of the 2022 World Swimming Championships with three potential gold medal races to bounce back tomorrow

by Sports Benches

Another day, another silver medal for the Dolphins Swim Team after Day 5 of the 2022 World Swimming Championships in Budapest, Hungary.

Let’s start with 18-year-old Mollie O’Callaghan who endured a fantastic day once again in the pool. Not only she was too good all along in the lead up to tomorrow night’s Women’s 100m breaststroke final, but she also brought home another silver for the Dolphins with Madi Wilson, Leah Neale & Kiah Melverton in the Women’s 4 x 200m freestyle relay.

Although Neale has the most credit when she briefly led the field at one point going into Stage 3/4 – but Katie Ledecky came in at the same as Melverton where she was proved too good for Team USA that sets up Bella Sims to finish off comfortably in 1st. As Bobby Hurley said on commentary, O’Callaghan will need to build on the early momentum in order to stay ahead. It’s the one weakness she couldn’t nail down China’s Junxuan Yang just before the finish line yesterday in the Women’s 200m Freestyle Final.

Then we look at Jenna Strauch over in the Women’s 200m breaststroke as she never looked out of place – especially when she came 1st in the semis before she ended up being the overall fastest out of the Top 8 for tomorrow night’s final. So does Zac Stubblety-Cook who smashed it in the Men’s 200m breaststroke where he came first as well in both preliminaries that sets up another potential gold to take home.

And shoutout to two other swimmers who couldn’t quite finish at least in the Top 3 but did their best nonetheless; Kaylee McKeown P6 in the Women’s 50m backstroke, as well as 18-year-old Liz Dekkers P5 in the Women’s 200m butterfly on her first International final – with a personal best time of 2:07:81.

Keep an eye on O’Callaghan, Stubblety-Cook and Strauch in the finals tomorrow that would hopefully put the Dolphins back to 2nd with three days left – even though it’s nearly impossible to catch up to their arch-rivals – Team USA.

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2022 World Swimming Championships Day 4: Dolphins Swim Team oh so close again with two silver medals on display

by Sports Benches

Oh so close from 18-year-old Mollie O’Callaghan with the silver in the 200m Women’s Freestyle Final. Yes, she wanted to build up gradually & then go all-in as part of her tactics inside the pool, having been comfortably in between 2nd and 3rd already. However, she just couldn’t catch up China’s Junxuan Yang on time before the end of the wall. It’s still a good swim though as she just her collected another medal here on top of her opening day gold in the Women’s 4 x 100 Freestyle Relay Final. Her team-mate Madison Wilson finished 5th where we would’ve liked to see her finish Top 2 again alongside Mollie from the heats and semis yesterday but great effort to bring it all the way home nonetheless.

Then we move onto the 4 x 100 Mixed Medley Relay Final where the Dolphins may be well off the pace during the first half with Kaylee McKeown (backstroke) and Zac Stubblety-Cook (breaststroke) leading our baton. However, it’s great to see Matt Temple recover well back in the Top 3 via the butterfly before Shayna Jack freestyles her way home that secured them the silver medal. It could’ve been another gold once again if McKeown and Stubblety-Cook were side-by-side with Team USA for the whole time. That way, the finish would’ve gave a better chance of thumping their arch-rivals for the gold, but glad to see them on the podium after a brilliant 2nd-half performance that provided a better pull towards the homestretch.

That’s all for Day 4 of the 2022 World Swimming Championships as the Dolphins added two silver today to their medal tally; two gold, four silver and one bronze that still sees them in 3rd spot right now behind Italy by just one gold medal.

Let’s see if Kaylee McKeown can get back to her best tomorrow night on Day 5 in the Women’s 50m backstroke Final, after she finished 3rd all day long that qualifies overall in 6th fastest. And so does 18-year-old Liz Dekkers from Brisbane in the Women’s 200m Butterfly Final following a bright start in the heats; She may finished 4th in the 1st semis but has done enough to book her place in 6th.

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