Chalmers Hits 400 Free & 50 Fly Personal Bests On Day 3 Of South Aussies

2020 SOUTH AUSTRALIA STATE CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Saturday, January 18 – Thursday, January 23rd
• SA Aquatic & Leisure Centre, Oaklands Park
• LCM
• Meet Site
• SwimSwam Preview
• Day 1 Recap/Day 2 Recap
• Live Results

The highlight of day 3 of these 2020 South Australia State Championships was Kaylee McKeown‘s performance in the 200m backstroke. The 18-year-old visiting Queenslander smashed a new personal best of 2:05.83 to now rank #1 in the world, as well as become the 2nd fastest woman ever from her nation. You can read more about the World Championships silver medalist’s feat here.

However, Kyle Chalmers also made his presence known at his home pool across his events, first topping the men’s 400m free podium in a new personal best of 3:53.66.

The last time Chalmers raced the 400m free was at the 2018 edition of these state championships, where he logged a time of 3:56.14. It was the year prior at the same meet where he produced his seed time of 3:55.29, a personal best.

The 100m free Olympic champion from 2016 managed to drop about one and a half seconds from that previous PB tonight, however, to now own a career-quickest of 3:53.66. That beat the field by over 20 seconds in essentially this one-man race.

Splits for Chalmers’ off-event race tonight are below:

21-year-old Chalmers logged another individual win before the night was through, with the Marion star notching a 50m fly winning effort of 23.48. That rendered Chalmers the champion by over 2 seconds in this blink-and-it’s-over event.

Chalmers punched a morning prelims time of 23.84 before hitting the wall this evening in 23.48, with both outings representing the man’s first results ever under the 24-second threshold. Chalmers entered this meet with a PB of 24.03 from 2014’s Australian Swimming Championships.

With his gold medal-worthy swim tonight, Chalmers checks-in among the nation’s fastest 50m fly performers in slot #7.