{"id":553586,"date":"2026-03-20T21:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T21:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/553586\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T21:11:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T21:11:08","slug":"australias-cameron-mcevoy-breaks-mens-world-50-metres-freestyle-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/553586\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia’s Cameron McEvoy breaks men’s world 50 metres freestyle record"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia’s Cameron McEvoy has broken the men’s 50 metres freestyle world record, which had stood for 17 years.<\/p>\n

The reigning Olympic and world champion posted a time of 20.88 seconds at the China Swimming Open in Shenzhen, clipping 0.03 off Brazilian C\u00e9sar Cielo’s previous mark.<\/p>\n

Cielo set his world record of 20.91 during swimming’s ‘super suit’ era in 2009.<\/p>\n

McEvoy is the first Australian to achieve the feat since Eamon Sullivan lowered the world record three times in 2008.<\/p>\n

“I knew I had a chance to do a PB (personal best),” McEvoy said.<\/p>\n

McEvoy’s rise to Olympic champion<\/a><\/p>\n

At the crossroads in his career following the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Australian swimmer Cameron McEvoy chose to follow his instincts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“My old PB was 21.06, so maybe 20.99? But doing \u206020.88 is unreal. It’s crazy.<\/p>\n

“The 50 metres, I look at it as a strength-based skill. It’s different to the other events in swimming.<\/p>\n

“A lot more strength and power is involved, and men peak in strength into their 30s \u2014 well into their 30s.”<\/p>\n

Cielo was quick to congratulate McEvoy on social media, tweeting: “Congrats, Cam. Lightning fast swim! Incredible!<\/p>\n

“I saw a phrase a while ago that perfectly captures what you’ve been doing.<\/p>\n

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Congratulations!”<\/p>\n

This was a reference to McEvoy’s famed new approach to swimming training, in which he spends more time in the gym rather than in the pool.<\/p>\n

Cielo’s record was set when high-tech swim suits were the norm, but they have since been banned.<\/p>\n

AAP\/Reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s Cameron McEvoy has broken the men’s 50 metres freestyle world record, which had stood for 17 years.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553587,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[273655,64,63,273654,273656,273657,44,15997,24862],"class_list":["post-553586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-50-metres-freestyle","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cameron-mcevoy","tag-cesar-cielo","tag-china-swimming-open","tag-news","tag-swimming","tag-world-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553586","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=553586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}