Sometimes you just have to say: “Too good,’’ which is effectively what former Olympic champions Kyle Chalmers and Zac Stubblety-Cook did after finishing with silver medals in events they hoped to win at Paris 2024. In both cases, Australia’s contenders bowed to new generation talents.
China’s Pan Zhanle put together the most extraordinary 100m freestyle in the history of the sport to take 0.4 of a second off his own world record, setting the other-worldly time of 46.40sec. He is now almost half a second quicker than the next fastest man in history, an unthinkable margin in the blue riband sprint.
