{"id":224335,"date":"2025-10-19T04:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224335\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T04:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:32:09","slug":"mollie-ocallaghan-crushes-200m-short-course-world-record-as-post-titmus-era-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/224335\/","title":{"rendered":"Mollie O’Callaghan crushes 200m short course world record as post-Titmus era begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mollie O’Callaghan has crushed the women’s short course 200m world record with a phenomenal 1:49.77 at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup second leg in Westmond, Illinois.<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old became the first woman to swim under 1:50 for the 200m freestyle, beating compatriot Lani Pallister \u2014 who set a new personal best time \u2014 into the silver medal spot by 2.29 seconds.<\/p>\n

The previous record stood at 1:50.31, set by Hong Kong\u2019s Siobh\u00e1n Haughey in 2021.<\/p>\n

For O’Callaghan and Australian swimming, it may well be a case of the queen is dead, long live the queen, following the shock retirement of long-course world record holder Ariarne Titmus on Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Titmus, who claimed the record in a 50m pool from O’Callaghan at the 2024 Olympic trials in Brisbane<\/a>, said she no longer had the fire for top-level competition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But her younger rival at St Peter’s Western, O’Callaghan, who also admitted it was hard to get back in the pool following a hugely successful Paris Olympics<\/a>, showed that she still has plenty to give with a sublime meet.<\/p>\n

As well as her crushing 200m swim, O’Callaghan claimed a bronze medal in the 50m freestyle \u2014 with compatriot Alexandria Perkins winning silver, which she matched in the 50m butterfly \u2014 and backstroke events, with the 100m still to come on Sunday, local time, in the 25m pool.<\/p>\n

O’Callaghan was beaten in that 50m backstroke by Kaylee McKeown, who edged Gretchen Walsh into silver by just 0.02 seconds, with O’Callaghan third.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, McKeown was beaten in the 100m backstroke by arch-rival Regan Smith, who equalled the world record to claim victory by over a second.<\/p>\n

\"Lani<\/p>\n

Lani Pallister set a new 400m World Cup best time in Illinois. (Getty Images: Sarah Stier, file)<\/p>\n

Earlier in the meet, Pallister set a new World Cup record in the 400m freestyle with an excellent 3:52.42, comfortably beating world championship bronze medallist Erika Fairweather of New Zealand.<\/p>\n

That time beat her own Australian record and was the third fastest time in history.<\/p>\n

“Any time you set records and some best times, you have to be happy,” Pallister told World Aquatics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I think for me, I’m going to get in trouble for a couple of my skills in that race. That’s something to work on moving forward which means I just have room for improvement.<\/p>\n

“As much as racing is important, I want to keep my volume relatively normal in a training week. So, I think the main thing is just keeping things up and relatively low intensity and use this as the hard part of the week.”<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

Pallister, who has emerged as Australia’s next middle distance queen in the absence of Titmus over the past year, paid credit to the four-time Olympic gold medallist.<\/p>\n

“I know there has been a lot of talk about her coming back and it’s nice she’s made a decision for her,” Pallister said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“She seems really happy at the moment, which I think is the nicest thing. She’s done so much as an athlete, so much for swimming, international swimming and setting the standard for middle distance swimming internationally.<\/p>\n

“I have a lot to thank her for, for making me a better athlete.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the men’s 400m, Sam Short took the win with a time of 3:36.27.<\/p>\n

“We have to keep up the strong reputation in the 400m freestyle,” said Short, who added a silver medal in the 800m on Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mollie O’Callaghan has crushed the women’s short course 200m world record with a phenomenal 1:49.77 at the World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224336,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[136092,132487,64,63,40979,32632,136093,85,136091,24862],"class_list":["post-224335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-200m-freestyle","tag-ariarne-titmus","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-lani-pallister","tag-mollie-ocallaghan","tag-short-course","tag-sports","tag-world-aquatic-swimming-world-cup","tag-world-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}