When the men’s 50m freestyle final is swum at the Rio Olympic trials on Wednesday night, few will remember the mystique the race once promised.
For the sport’s typically self-loathing legion of late 20th-century distance trainers, the event seemed to suggest the action and octane of drag car racing.
Oddly, that mystique peaked before, not after, it was legitimised with Olympic inclusion in 1988. After that, it seemed to flounder as an alternative brand, as if being punished for its failure to deliver. In short, it seemed stillborn.
But the one lap dash is not without its legends. And once again, the name that leaps to mind is also one which probably peaked before the event’s Olympic embrace.
In the mid-1980s, every Australian pool had its Tom Yaeger myth, the most popular having the American turn up for training (only if he felt like it), stroll several laps of the pool deck in his track suit, pause to enigmatically sniff the chlorine from time to time, then go home.
Once again, for lap weary swimmers, this was a kind of porn, so obscenely did it challenge the usual tenets of skill through drudgery. When Yaeger condescended to compete in the Olympics, he could only win the minor medals. But that seems to not to have mattered. He remains a bigger legend than anyone who ever took gold.
But then, maybe this is only the view from Australian eyes. After all, we have never won a gold medal in the event. Never any medal, in fact. Seemingly, we don’t do fast, at least not super fast.
The current world number one, France’s Florent Manaudou, is also the reigning Olympic champ and seems to have a stranglehold on the race. World rankings have him almost half a second (read half a light year) ahead of the world this year.
When Cameron McEvoy, James Magnussen and co do the one-breath sprint on Wednesday, many will see plenty of splash, but little significance.
Perhaps it will be the girls, particularly the Campbell sisters, Cate and Bronte, who many give a shot at taking the Olympic event, to heat up the pool instead.
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