A lineup of swimming champions aiming for the 2024 Paris Olympics plunged into their first high-level races since last year’s Commonwealth Games at the NSW State Open Swimming Championships on Friday. But pop star turned butterfly specialist Cody Simpson has wasted no time shattering records this year.
Simpson braved the Rottnest Channel Swim last month alongside Mack Horton, Josh Edwards-Smith and Bowen Gough. They swam the 19.7km stretch between Perth’s Cottesloe Beach and Rottnest Island in three hours and 33 minutes, breaking the team record by three minutes.
Cody Simpson is relishing the chance to swim for Australia under Grant Hackett.Credit:Getty
“At the start it’s pretty scary kind of going into that environment,” Simpson said of his first open-water race. “But I was able to come back with a new perspective on pool swimming … No jellyfish, no currents, no swells. You get back in the pool and you’re like ‘Ahh, the water’s so smooth’.”
Simpson, Olympic star Ariarne Titmus and 400m world champion Elijah Winnington were among the athletes testing their competitive mettle at Sydney Olympic Park at the start of the three-day championship on Friday.
Titmus has just returned from a training camp in Thailand, where she smashed 70km per week in the pool. The current 400m freestyle world-record holder said the shorter time-frame between Olympic Games due to Tokyo’s yearlong pandemic-induced delay was on her mind.
“It’s gonna come around very fast,” Titmus said of next year’s Paris Olympics. “[The NSW Open] gives you a gauge of where you might have to give yourself a bit of a whip on the bum, or if you’re in a good spot. That’s the main reason why we come here to race.”
Titmus said part of her strategy was racing less than her competitors and surprising challengers with her form on race day. But she’s expecting her competition to be tougher than ever.
“There’s some very fast swimming at the moment. It just goes to show that the world of swimming is moving in the right direction,” she said. “Especially that 400 freestyle. I believe that all three women on that podium are going to be well and truly under four minutes.”
Olympic champions Kaylee McKeown, Kyle Chalmers, Mack Horton and Emma McKeon were also in the pool on Friday ahead of July’s world championships in Japan. McKeon qualified for the 100m freestyle in 53.65, the third-fastest time in the world so far this year.
Freestyle sprinter Elijah Winnington clinched gold in the 400m freestyle at last year’s world championships after a fruitless Olympic campaign saw him briefly bow out of the sport.
Ariarne Titmus has just finished a gruelling training camp in Thailand where she covered 70km a week in the pool.Credit:Getty
“It’s exactly what I needed leading into such a close turnaround to another Olympic Games,” Winnington said. “It was a massive year, more so confidence-wise and mental-wise than anything else. I’m just building that this year.
“If I can back up my title, that would be nice. But I also want to plant some seeds in some of my competitors’ heads going to Paris.”
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