Australia Leaves Medal-Worthy Relay on the Bench, Misses Finals of Mixed 200 Medley

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Australia, one of two world swimming superpowers, missed the final of the mixed 200 medley relay on Wednesday morning at the World Short Course Swimming Championships. That caused a shock among television commenters and home-nation spectators in Melbourne, where the expectation is that Australia is good enough to at least final, if not contend for medals, in every relay, every time.

And while Australia likely had a medal-candidate mixed medley relay on their roster this year, they didn’t have a deep enough bench to use their “B” lineup and still qualify into the top 8.

The relay exchanges were pretty good – all around two-tenths of a second. The table below presumes about a four-tenths improvement over flat start for relay splits on the theoretical finals relays.

Australian relay potential, mixed 200 medley relay:

Australia ultimately missed the final by four-tenths of a second behind 8th-place Canada and 7th-place China. What makes that really really hurt is that they left their best male sprint backstroker at the meet, Isaac Cooper, off the prelims relay. Cooper’s best time is 23.31 in the 50 backstroke, which if matched, would have put Australia through to the final. Cooper is only 18 and is on an upward trajectory in his career generally, aside from being sent home from the Commonwealth Games for misusing prescription medicine.

That would have left Australia with a finals relay that includes three of their biggest stars, who are all swimming very well so far at the meet, in front of a home crowd. A 1:36.96 would’ve placed 2nd at last year’s championships behind the Dutch, a relay that isn’t nearly as good this year.

It sounds like a perfect scenario for Australia to go after the prelims relay and chase a medal in the evening, but history shows us that this miss isn’t really a surprise.

Australia has only made the final in this event once in the six occasions when it has been offered at the World Short Course Swimming Championships. That came in 2018, where they did use their stars in prelims to qualify 3rd. Mitch Larkin, Grayson Bell, Holly Barratt, and Emily Seebohm swam 1:38.71 in prelims and then 1:38.69 in finals, sliding to 7th place.

They didn’t swim the race in the other four years it was offered, generally eschewing the event as a novelty but not a serious race worthy of focus.

But it’s unclear if that was the case this year – or if it should have been – with the pressure of a home audience to win as many medals as possible (remember that Swimming Australia is funded with taxpayer dollars). We don’t know what their finals lineup would have been and if it would have been the “best” lineup as listed above.

But what we do know is that the wrong lineup in prelims probably cost them a medal. We’ve seen it before – notably at the 2015 World Championships where both the US and Australia missed the final, and Australia missed automatic relay qualification – and it’s not the end of the world. But it is going to be a thing that people remember from this meet, and that’s too bad, because the team is, overall, swimming very well.