The all-conquering women’s 4x100m freestyle team’s victory extends a championship-winning run that began in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I don’t really care if I come first [or] if come last, I just want to find love for the sport again,” McKeown said.<\/p>\n
McKeown completed the 100-200m backstroke double at the Paris Olympics just months after Smith broke the Queenslander’s world record at the US trials.<\/p>\n
She said the experience was overwhelming.<\/p>\n
“Off the back of Paris, I just found I was getting a bit consumed with the pressure and the nerves, not only [what] the media circulates, but [what] I put on myself,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So, I’m really just taking this year to get back into it, find my love for the sport again, because I don’t ever want to lose that.”<\/p>\n
Asked whether she was succeeding in that mission to regain her love, McKeown responded: “Absolutely.”<\/p>\n
McKeown said she had benefited from making changes in her personal life.<\/p>\n
“I’ve moved back to the Sunshine Coast now and it’s been the best move that I could have done for myself,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I’m the happiest I’ve been outside the sport for a really, really long time and hopefully maybe not this year, but next year it will start showing in my swimming, too.”<\/p>\n
Not that her swimming is exactly bad, rather it is just not at a world-record level just yet.<\/p>\n
“I think it would be boring if there wasn’t a rivalry [with Smith],” McKeown said.<\/p>\n
“It’s the reason that swimming becomes competitive. That’s all I’ve really got to say on that.”<\/p>\n
McKeown would not be drawn on her ambition for the 100m backstroke final, a race she did not want to swim.<\/p>\n
“I don’t care what anyone’s telling me. I’m going to be really, really stubborn with this,” McKeown said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t care what you guys [media] want to put on me. I’m just here to have a good time and have fun and, like I said, if that’s coming last, if that’s coming first, I’m here for a good time.”<\/p>\n
Perkins makes podium<\/p>\n
It was a more subdued night for Australia in Singapore after the double gold success of Sunday night.<\/p>\n
Australia’s only medal was a bronze to Alex Perkins in the women’s 100m butterfly.<\/p>\n
Perkins was third in a time of 56.33 to finish behind US world record holder Gretchen Walsh, who set a championship mark of 54.73 in the final.<\/p>\n
The bronze was Perkins’s first individual medal at a World Aquatics Championships.<\/p>\n
“I couldn’t be happier, honestly,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I tried not to expect anything going into that final. I just wanted to put my best foot forward and be proud of what I’ve done.<\/p>\n
“Coming away with a medal is just a bonus.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Australia’s Alexandria Perkins (right) claimed bronze in the women’s 100m butterfly. (Getty Images: Andy Cheung)<\/p>\n
Walsh had been battling food poisoning and had pulled out of the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay final the previous evening.<\/p>\n
But on Monday she powered home to record the second-fastest time in history.<\/p>\n
Perkins, swimming in lane three next to Walsh (lane four), said she did not dare to dream that the American great’s upset stomach might give her an outside chance of victory.<\/p>\n
“No, she’s [Walsh] an incredible athlete. I knew she’d be in the race and wanting that individual world title, and I think that lifts the whole field,” Perkins said.<\/p>\n
“So I’m really happy she was there and I got to race alongside her. She’s just incredible.<\/p>\n
“[I] had a little chat to her in marshalling. She’s lovely and humble.”<\/p>\n
Perkins, who turned 25 on Sunday, debuted for Australia at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.<\/p>\n
She has won silver medals in relays at the Olympics and World Aquatics Championships as a heat swimmer.<\/p>\n
Perkins said she had always seen herself as more of a trainer than a racer.<\/p>\n
“I just feel like I trained at a level that was higher than I was racing, but now I really feel it’s starting to reflect in my racing a little bit more,” Perkins said.<\/p>\n
Canadian Summer McIntosh made it two golds from as many events, winning the women’s 200m individual medley.<\/p>\n
McIntosh triumphed in a time of 2:06.69, which is a second slower than the world record she set at the Canadian trials.<\/p>\n
But it was almost 2 seconds faster than American Alex Walsh, who finished second.<\/p>\n
Eighteen-year-old McIntosh is contesting five individual races and two relays in Singapore.<\/p>\n
Michael Phelps is the only swimmer to have won five individual gold medals at a single edition of the World Aquatic Championships, a feat he achieved when the event was held in Melbourne in 2007.<\/p>\n
After claiming gold in the men’s 4x100m relay, Australia’s Flynn Southam (1:45.80) narrowly missed out on a place in the final of the men’s 200m freestyle, finishing 10th fastest across the two semifinals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s five-time Olympic gold medallist Kaylee McKeown has set up a showdown with US rival Regan Smith in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[27350,64,63,27348,27349,942,85,15997,3138,2798],"class_list":["post-28547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alexandria-perkins","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kaylee-mckeown","tag-regan-smith","tag-singapore","tag-sports","tag-swimming","tag-world-aquatics-championships","tag-world-titles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28547","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=28547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}