Smoke on the water, Fire in the sky. When the smoke cleared over the Brisbane Aquatic Centre on Friday night, there was wreckage everywhere.
The women’s 100m freestyle final at the Australian Olympic trials was always going to be a combustible mix of pride, dreams and desperation, with both joy and devastation in its wake. There were too many champions fighting for too few Olympic places for it to end any other way.
The best-credentialed sprint field ever assembled in Australia featured the reigning Olympic champion, three world champions, two world championships medallists, a world junior champion and a world junior medallist, all swimming for two individual places in the Olympic team, with the fallback of four more places available in the 4 X 100m freestyle relay.
In the end, the 20-year-old world champion Mollie O’Callaghan triumphed (52.33sec), one of the few to swim faster than she had in qualifying, a reflection of the suffocating pressure they all felt.
World silver medallist Shayna Jack snatched the second individual place (52.75), three years after a doping infraction prevented her from competing at the Tokyo trials. Jack has been through the fire trying to prove her innocence and it steeled her for this fresh ordeal.
“Coming back, I always thought about this moment, and how do I get to this moment? How do I make it come true?”
She said she had used “every bit of motivation from anybody who ever doubted me” and was overcome by emotion when she realised she had qualified.
“And knowing that I reached a point of absolute despair and not even knowing if I wanted to return to the sport - it’s just, it’s just happiness,’’ she said.
By contrast, Australia’s most decorated Olympian Emma McKeon, winner of four gold medals in Tokyo, lost the chance to defend her Olympic title, finishing sixth (53.33). She then admitted that her preparation for the trials had been undermined by shoulder soreness, the joints no longer able to bear the weight of her ambitions.
Meg Harris, who was fastest in the morning heats (52.52), could not quite reproduce that form, and finished third (52.97), missing an individual spot, but claiming a place on the gold medal favourite relay, as did former world champion Bronte Campbell (53.10), who had to overcome a calf tear to qualify for her fourth Olympic Games.
The world junior champion Olivia Wunsch, 18, defied the odds, setting a personal best of 53.17sec to clinch a relay berth. The first six were under the Olympic qualifying time.
Afterwards, there were tears of all kinds, of joy for Jack, of disappointment for Harris, of pity for Campbell, of relief for O’Callaghan, who felt the pressure going into the 200m freestyle final as the world record-holder two days earlier. She was heartbroken at losing the record to her clubmate Ariarne Titmus, despite swimming faster than she did to win the world title last year.
After that result, O’Callaghan revealed that she was being “eaten by nerves’’ and was unable to sleep before the 200m. But she turned it around for the 100m.
“I learned so much about myself and nerves and learning that I can swim regardless of being up at night crying before the race, or throughout the day, just being so tense and so wound up because I’ve never had to deal with the pressure of being a world record-holder,’’ she said.
“I wasn’t that nervous for this race compared to the 200. Getting the 200 done was great, got all the nerves off my chest. I really wanted to do well in this race and held myself to high expectations, and to get it done is just such a big relief.’’
The agony of these sudden-death trials emerged early, when one of the Australian swimming team’s greatest servants, four-times Olympian Cate Campbell was eliminated even before the final showdown.
Campbell is a former world record-holder and world champion in this event but the clock showed her no mercy in the morning heats. She failed to qualify for the eight-woman final by the narrowest margin possible, 0.01sec.
At 32, she has been the spiritual leader of three consecutive Olympic gold medal-winning 4 x 100m freestyle relays, yet her Paris aspirations are now hanging by a thread. She must finish in the top two in the 50m freestyle on the final day of competition on Saturday or she is out.
Her younger sister Bronte revealed that Cate had been ill leading into the trials, as she paid tribute to her sibling.
With emotion welling in her throat, Bronte said she was “devastated” for Cate.
“I think she’s one of the most incredible athletes that we’ve ever had in this event,’’ she said. “She was our No.1 freestyler for what 10-11-12 years in a row. That’s a feat that’s pretty much unmatched in Australian sporting history. I know she was a bit ill leading into this and had a really rough last few weeks, so I’m sure she’ll be disappointed because we all know that she’s an incredible athlete and can swim a lot faster than that.”
In a parallel drama, former world 400m freestyle champion and 1500m medallist Sam Short withdrew from the 1500m freestyle due to a gastric illness.
Short contracted a stomach bug three weeks ago and lost 4kg in 48 hours, but still managed to qualify for the Olympic team this week by finishing second in the 400m and 800m freestyle.
However, the endurance specialist and his coach Damien Jones decided it was not in his best interest to contest the most gruelling pool event while he was unwell.
They took a calculated risk, knowing that it was unlikely that two other men would better the stiff qualifying time of 14:54.29 in the trial. That’s how the race unfolded and 20-year-old Short is now certain to be nominated for the 400m, 800m and 1500m in Paris.
Jones said getting Short back to full health would be their priority now, but he believed they had enough time to be ready for the Games in six weeks.
“We want to win the Olympics, so no one’s going to take any shortcuts,’’ he said.
The Australian Paralympic Trials concluded on Friday night with the naming of a 30-member team for Paris in August, led by three returning gold medallists, fresh world record-holder Tim Hodge, and including five-times Paralympian Brenden Hall and 15-year-old Holly Warn.
The team is: Jesse Aungles, Emily Beecroft, Ricky Betar, Lewis Bishop, Rowan Crothers, Katja Dedekind, Tom Gallagher, Jasmine Greenwood, Brenden Hall, Benjamin Hance, Timothy Hodge, Jack Ireland, Ella Jones, Jenna Jones, Ahmed Kelly, Alexa Leary, Paige Leonhardt, Maddie McTernan, Jake Michel, Chloe Osborn, Grant Patterson, Lakeisha Patterson, Col Pearse, Alex Saffy, Callum Simpson, Keira Stephens, Ruby Storm, Holly Warn, Rachael Watson, Poppy Wilson.
