Cody Simpson Split Within 0.01/0.06 Of Goal Splits During 51.76 100 Butterfly

In the wake of his Commonwealth Games-qualifying outing at the 2022 Australian Swimming Trials, Cody Simpson offered an insight into how he made it happen. Simpson shared via his Instagram story a photo of his pre-race goal splits alongside his actual splits from his prelims swim. The post reveals that Simpson nearly exactly hit both his goal time and his goal splits in the 100 butterfly.

According to Simpson’s plans, he intended to open the race with a 24.40 and come back with a 27.34 on the back half. He opened 0.01 seconds faster than that 24.40, starting the race with a 27.39, and then closed with a 27.40, which is just 0.06 seconds off 27.34. Overall he got within 0.05 seconds of his goal time and successfully cracked the FINA A cut of 51.96.

The swim in question, which was Simpson’s prelims swim, was a bit faster than what he swam during finals when he exactly matched the FINA A cut. He swam a 51.96 for 3rd place behind Matt Temple (51.50) and Kyle Chalmers (51.67). Temple and Chalmers qualified to race the 100 butterfly at World Championships, while all three of them made it onto the Commonwealth Games team.

In the final, Simpson actually opened faster than his goal split and prelims split with a 27.14 but closed slower with a second-half split of 27.76.

This marks the first time that Simpson has qualified for a senior international swim team. After leaving the sport as an age group swimmer nearly 10 years ago, Simpson returned to swimming competitively in October of 2019. Simpson raced at the 2021 Australian Olympic Trials last year and qualified for the final of the 100 butterfly where he finished in 8th place with a 52.94.

Simpson recently shared a post on Instagram of himself after the meet along with his current training squad of elite Australian swimmers, 10 of whom have qualified to race for Australia this summer. Simpson is a member of Michael Bohl and Janelle Pallister‘s training squad along with Olympic gold medalists Mack Horton, Emma McKeon, Kaylee McKeown, Olympic medalist Brendon Smith, Olympian Taylor McKeown, and World Championships qualifiers Lani Pallister, Joshua Edwards-Smith, Bowen Gough, Taylor McKeown, Moesha Johnson.