World Aquatics Championships: Mollie O'Callaghan finishes second in 100m freestyle final

Mercury

3 days ago

O'Callaghan was the strong favourite to win the two-lap sprint after taking out the 200m gold two days earlier, but the 21-year-old Queenslander couldn't muster the speed to hold off Dutch star Marrit Steenbergen on the last lap.
The pair turned at the 50m mark dead-heated for third with identical times of 25.34 but Steenbergen turned on the afterburners to cover the second length 0.12 quicker than O'Callaghan.
Steenbergen, who won gold at the last world championships, touched the wall first in 52.55 seconds with O'Callaghan claiming silver in 52.67.
Asked how she felt, O'Callaghan said: 'Tired, very tired.
'I've been coming off last night and like I've said a thousand times, I haven't had the greatest preparation towards this and to do what I did tonight and last night and the nights before, I'm pretty proud.
'To be on the podium is something special and I'm always grateful for that. Obviously, I would love to win, everyone would love to win.'
American Torri Huske, who won the silver medal behind Sarah Sjostrom at last year's Paris Olympics, collected bronze after leading at the halfway stage before being overtaken by the Dutch and Aussie speedsters.
O'Callaghan had already won three gold medals in Singapore to lift her career tally to 11 golds at the world championships.
That leaves her tied with Thorpe for the most by an Aussie but she still has the chance to surpass him with two relays still to come in Singapore, though she admitted she was battling fatigue.
'Absolutely. I'd be a superhuman if I said there wasn't,' O'Callaghan said.
'I've had the heaviest programme in the Australian team, so I've had to really get my act together as best as I could this week. I've got another few relays, which is exciting.
'It's nice to finish off with relays and for that, hopefully I can pick myself up again, get a flush, cool down and get going again.'
A hard taskmaster, O'Callaghan was critical of her performance at the Paris Olympics when she missed out on the podium in the 100m free even though she had won three golds, a silver and a bronze in her other events.
'Obviously I was disappointed with Paris because I didn't think that's what I was capable of doing, but the Olympics are a beast like no other,' she said.
'You don't have comfort like worlds. Worlds, you get treated like a queen. Olympics, it's kind of like you're shipped on a bus for an hour and a half. It's not very high performance.
'You know what you sign up for at the Olympics. Again, at the Olympics, it was only two of us who did that 200m free and it's never been done before, the 200m and the 100m, so it just proves how hard it is to back up from that.'
Australia also won a bronze medal in the men's 4x200m freestyle relay, behind Britain and China, but slipped to second place on the overall medals table behind the United States after Kate Douglass won gold in the women's 200m breaststroke.
The Dolphins will have a great chance to add to their gold medal tally on Saturday after Cameron McEvoy qualified fastest for the men's 50m freestyle semi in 21.30.
World record holder Kaylee McKeown also has a great shot at gold in the women's 200m backstroke after she took it easy to qualify fourth fastest for the final.
McKeown's former coach Michael Bohl made a very public appearance on the pool deck to embrace his new star pupil Qin Haiyang after he won the men's 200m breaststroke final from the outside lane.
The world record holder, Qin only snuck into the final as the slowest qualifier but stormed to gold from lane eight to earn a big hug from Bohl.
'That's so amazing. Have you heard of the Lane 8 miracle? You saw it tonight,' he said.
In a move that sent shockwaves through Australian swimming, Bohl quit the Dolphins after Paris to help the Chinese prepare for the next Olympics in Los Angeles.
One of the world's greatest swim coaches who oversaw the careers of Olympic superstars including Stephanie Rice, Emma McKeon and McKeown, Bohl is overseeing the preparations of more than a dozen top swimmers, including at least two of the 23 competitors who tested positive to trimetazidine (TMZ), the same prohibited drug that Sun Yang was once banned for.
None of the swimmers were charged after the positive samples were deemed to be the result of eating contaminated food prepared in a hotel kitchen.
Bohl is not the first Australian coach to join China.
Denis Cotterell, one of Bohl's closest friends and former mentors, has long been a pioneer with Team China, overseeing the career of Sun, China's most successful and divisive swimmer.
The obvious attraction for Aussie coaches agreeing to help China's swimmers is the eye-watering salaries on offer, with unconfirmed reports of some getting paid up to $1 million a year, more than five times what they get for doing the same work in their homeland. Better than Thorpe? Mollie closes on incredible swim record
Originally published as World Aquatics Championships: Mollie O'Callaghan finishes second in 100m freestyle final