The Australian contingency that may race at this year’s FINA World Aquatic Championships appears to be getting smaller with each passing week, with more star power opting out of the Budapest-bound competition.
We already reported that multi-Olympic medalist Kyle Chalmers and the most decorated Aussie Olympian of all-time Emma McKeon were bypassing Budapest to instead focus on the Commonwealth Games.
However, now 400m freestyle world and Olympic champion Ariarne Titmus is following suit. This means we won’t see another potential showdown between the 21-year-old Aussie and her American rival Katie Ledecky in the 200m or 400m free in Budapest.
Titmus was the first woman to beat Ledecky in the 400m free in an international competition when the Dean Boxall-trained athlete did so at the 2019 World Championships in Budapest. She followed that up with golden swims in the 200m and 400m in Tokyo.
When the 2022 Worlds were originally slated for Fukuoka this May, Swimming Australia announced that several upper-echelon athletes would be able to bypass the elite competition in favor of the Commonwealth Games.
Of those, Yahoo is reporting that only Kaylee McKeown, Brendon Smith and Zac Stubblety-Cook are considering racing in Budapest, although Titmus has confirmed she will be racing at the Aussie World Championships Trials in May nonetheless.
An example of why Titmus is peaking for Comm Games instead of Worlds. Harvey Norman is one of Titmus’ main sponsors along with Nike and Speedo.
Curious why they would choose to compete in Comm Games vs. World Championships? Isn’t there more (and greater) competition in WC? Commonwealth is just a mini, more exclusive version of the Olympics, no?
If they are having dual in the pool Head to Head that’s great for swimming n increase visibility in today’s sport
May be a slightly off topic question but is there going to be a 1500 free for women and 800 for men at the CWGs? Have noticed some intl meets still haven’t included these events despite the olympics shift in position. Good that they have stroke 50s though
What is this, a world championship for ants?
Comm Games will be with us for a very long time there’s no doubt about that. On a swimming level I’d put them slightly above the Worlds for all Comm eligible countries as their significance is to them is tantamount to that of an Olympics. I just feel that countries that are not part of our Commonwealth family simply don’t and won’t get it resulting in some of the negative comments you often see surface here. At the end of the day I can safely say that there’s not one swimming fan here that will not watch the games as it’s going to be highly competitive and the atmosphere will certainly be better than that which you will get in… Read more »
This is getting stupid. Maybe we should just crown whoever swims a World #1 time the World Champion.
look on the bright side, 2022 is the year when Katinka can get to the 100 medals