- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
18-year-old Australian Kyle Chalmers has upset the world order of swimming, smashing his second 50 metres to win 100 metre freestyle final at the Olympic swimming meet in Rio.
Chalmers may have turned in seventh, behind the American defending gold medallist Nathan Adrian and pre-Games favourite and fellow Aussie Cameron McEvoy, but it didn’t seem to matter at all as he powered home to win a gold medal in his first Olympic Games.
Even halfway through the second and final lap, he looked like an unlikely chance to take home the gold medal.
» Men’s 100m final result, live blog
But a powerful swim from the powerfully-built Chalmers saw him take the result in as comfortable fashion as a 100m freestyle final will ever be.
Chalmers beat his own personal best by half a second to claim the gold medal, giving an understated fist pump while the rest of Australia yelled and screamed and applauded.
It was a terrific race from a terrific young athlete. It looked as though he was gone at the halfway point. Completely gone. But he showed why he was in lane 5, and is one of the hottest prospects of Australian swimming.
Fellow Australian McEvoy finished in seventh position in the end, but was right in the mix until the last 20 metres. Pieter Timmers of Belgium snatched the silver with a strong swim from lane 7 and Nathan Adrian of the USA got the bronze, just fading a little towards the end of the race.
You could have thrown a blanket over the field in the end, with McEvoy only half a second behind Chalmers at the end.
Chalmers becomes our first Olympic gold medallist in the men’s 100m freestyle in almost half a century, with the last one coming in the Mexico City Olympics in 1968.
After the race Chalmers was clearly still shocked he’d won, saying that the “fact that I’ve won hasn’t sunk in at all.”
McEvoy showed great dignity despite not being among the medals, saying that the race didn’t quite go the way he wanted to.
About half an hour later it had sunk in, with Chalmers saying he was “exceptionally excited about it.”
He was clearly still focussed on the relay, though. “I still have a job to do in the relay coming up.”
Final result in the men’s 100m freestyle final:
Gold: Kyle Chalmers Australia
Silver: Timmers Belgium
Bronze: Adrian USA