2021 QUEENSLAND CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Saturday, December 11th – Friday, December 17th
- Brisbane Aquatic Centre
- LCM (50m)
- SwimSwam Preview
- Entries
- Results
The Australians competing at these 2021 Queensland Championships came to race, as we’ve already seen some impressive performances from the likes of Olympic gold medalist Zac Stubblety-Cook and more.
Stubblety-Cook crushed a winning effort of 2:07.00 to take the men’s 200m breast in the 3rd fastest time of his career. You can read more about that performance here.
Among the younger set, 16-year-old Flynn Southam and 13-year-old Olympia Pope put up some age record-setting results, which you can review here and here.
Although no records were broken at her hand, St. Peters Western’s 17-year-old ace Mollie O’Callaghan logged double victories tonight, taking on the women’s 200m free and 100m back events.
The Olympic gold medalist first posted a 2free outing of 1:56.51, beating teammate and reigning 400m free and 200m free Olympic gold medalist Ariarne Titmus.
Opening in 57.35 and closing in 59.16, O’Callaghan got to the wall nearly 1 second ahead of Titmus who settled for silver in 1:57.36. Brianna Throssell rounded out the top 3 in 1:58.16.
As for Titmus, the 21-year-old is merely shaking off the cobwebs here in Queensland. We reported how, as of September, the Dean Boxall-trained star hadn’t swum a lap since her Tokyo success, giving her mind and body time to rest and take stock of what she accomplished this summer.
For O’Callaghan, the teen’s other gold medal this evening came in the 100m back where she scored a time of 1:00.67 for the win. She’s been as fast as 58.86 in this event but her casual 1:00.67 after a 2free performance was enough to get the job done here.
The men’s 200m free saw 19-year-old Olympian Tommy Neill of Rackley own the gold in a time of 1:47.28 over Tokyo teammate Elijah Winnington.
Winnington clocked 1:48.22 for silver while Griffith’s World championships finalist Clyde Lewis was next in one in 1:48.88.
Neill was another swimmer who took on a dirty double as he would wind up atop the men’s 400m IM podium as well this evening. Neill posted a winning time of 4:19.18 to rake in another piece of hardware. His result here checks in as his first-ever time under 4:20, as his previous PB rested at the 4:22.07 he produced 2 years ago.
As a testament to Neill’s versatility, the teen also clocked an anchor of 21.83 yesterday as a member of Rackley’s mixed 200m free relay.
Additional Notes:
- The women’s 200m breast saw Abbey Harkin grab gold in 2:29.91.
- Oscar Kolenbet of Southside Aquatics earned a new Queensland Age Record in the boys 12-year-old 200m breast. He took the victory in a time of 2:34.86 to surpass the previous QLD Ae Record of 2:35.10 Olympic champion Stubblety-Cook established in 2011.
- Mitch Larkin was back in the water, putting up a mark of 53.80 to get the edge over fellow Olympian Isaac Cooper‘s 54.55 in the men’s 100m back.
So Southam has gone 49.4 twice this meet with wildly different splits.
49.42: 24.08/25.34
49.40: 24.62/24.78
I’m thinking he was probably expecting a bigger drop this meet and the different race plans result from frustration.
I’m just happy he’s still swimming. The times are a bonus. Onwards and Upwards!
Looking at many of the age records is a grim reminder. So many times you think ‘whatever happened to X?’
Yes, I hope he doesn’t get discouraged. Perhaps taking down Chalmers’ age records has created pressure he’d have been better off without at this stage.
Being the ‘new Kyle Chalmers’ as well as the ‘new Ian Thorpe’ must be daunting for a kid. Hopefully he can surf any waves of doubt and just enjoy his sport.
Interested to see what Shayna Jack does tonight after swimming surprisingly well in the heat. Mollie has had more swims already but rhinking she should be able to win..
And Mollie did with 53.62, then backing up with a win in her age 200m Back. Shayna would be very pleased with her 53.80 however.
Wow, apparently a nerve has been touched, hopefully not in Titmus’ balky rugby trainer-treated shoulder.
Try not to be that bigoted about shoulder therapists . I shall take your advice & follow this guy , he sounds great !
Can someone explain all the references to the “rugby trainer” for me? People seem obsessed with it. Like are people just salty about Titmus beating their fav or are they implying something? Because I don’t understand the obsession with it.
I’d be pretty embarrassed if someone a rugby trainer as their coach and they beat me at something that wasn’t rugby.
They seem to imply something illegal or suspicious every time. It’s ridiculous. Wish they’d give up.
Athletes getting rehab advice from experts in another field of sport is as old as sport itself. The innuendo from one or two posters is pretty ridiculous.
Ok so they are just super salty. Imagine hating someone so much just for being good lol.
I think that Ledecky will no way give up on being in great shape at 200 distance. W800 relay was the only word record that was that close to have but was always eluding her. First there was a great opportunity teaming with greatest at the moment 200FR racers: Schmitt and Franklin. But these three were never in peak at the same time. Then with the team of none 200 specialists they superseded the 10 years old high-tech suits record set by Chinese team. But were 0.3sec late with that behind Australian team. And this year another world record but again a few tenths of a second late. If USA swimming produces finally another sub 1:55 sec swimmer then Katie… Read more »
China and Australia seem capable of breaking it again as well.
Sure there was no doubts that the gold medal with breaking of world record will go to Australia. But only second part of this strong prediction had happened. And the world record became indeed very tough now. It requires four swimmers swimming 1:55.0 With McKeon won’t be probably the member of next olympic 800 relay it will be hard for Australians to get this record back even if Titmus is still that good at 200. As for Chinese girls, that was indeed incredible team work achievement without having 1:53 swimmer. Will it happen again? They did something similar 13 years ago. And it was home olympics. I don’t think they will repeat same again soon.
Australia won in 2008 China 2nd USA 3rd . Im not sure what you are on about .
Swap Mollie’s flat start with Neale’s flying start leg (assuming a 0.25 advantage from the flying start) and the Aussies would have the world record. They are absolutely capable of breaking it even with their current swimmers at their current ability.
Mollie said she isn’t even a 200 swimmer and rarely swam it previously. If she trained for the 200 she easily has 1:54 potential, giving Australia a potential 1:53, 1:54, 1:54 and 1:55, potentially breaking the WR by over a second.
Surely Mollie has been training for the 200 for a while now otherwise her doing sub 29 final 50s is a bit insane. Her final 50 in Tokyo was even faster than Titmus’ at trials.
Hopefully McKeon can solve the peaking in both 50 and 200 puzzle.
Canada was a 154 Taylor Ruck split away from being right in the mix with top 2. Unfortunately, as with most teams, they needed at least 4 (+ a prelims helper) to be 100% on at the same time.
A decent day one with hopefully more good results to come. Yes – it’s early and means little but still nice to see some positive results.
I think Mollie also had to race another 100 back before the 1.00 100 back. Super good
Yes, the age group 100 back. Three finals in an hour.
For the swimmer who can swim 1:53.09 when there wasn’t absolutely any necessity of doing that and then swam 1.5 sec slower when that was really important I wouldn’t pay any attention to her in-season time.
As for Ledecky, she is btw #4 ranking this season with her in-season time being just a few one hundredth of a second behind the Olympic performance of Yang. And her relay race indicates that she was on par with Haughey. Should she have same kind of program in Tokyo as those girls the final race in W200FR would look completely different. The 400 race on the first day of Olympic competition was a killer for both Titmus and Ledecky.
Is Ledecky… Read more »
Agreed, the one thing Ledecky needs to work on is tactics. Now she has real competition her races have completely changed, and I think she got a bit caught out in Tokyo in how to respond. Titmus’s tactics and timing were impeccable.
Ledecky always had competition in the 200 free though. The medal winning times in Tokyo are only marginally faster than in Rio (0.23, 0.16 and 0.22 for GSB respectively). Her winning margin was only 0.35 in the 200 in Rio compared to almost 5 seconds in the 400 and almost 12 seconds in the 800.
I don’t think tactics had that much to do with it in the 200 specifically, she just swam slower.
We will see!
I think it is more than “cobwebs” and supposed time off with regard to the Titmus performance drop.The rugby trainer (Jeremy Hickmans) she and Boxall brought in for the Julian Linden-reported “extraordinary treatment and rehabilitation” of her shoulder injury in the short months prior to the Olympics has now quietly returned to the rugby world (see link below) with nary a detailed media report post-Olympics as to how Hickmans so quickly fixed Titmus’ shoulder leading to Tokyo.Titmus continues to discuss shoulder issues, so perhaps she is setting the stage for more treatment as important meets draw closer.
https://wwos.nine.com.au/nrl/nrl-news-the-mole-canberra-raiders-sign-jeremy-hickmans/deb70c9e-10fb-4269-9425-2b74ec8a4a0e
Give it a rest.