{"id":821608,"date":"2026-07-24T20:49:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/821608\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T20:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T20:49:11","slug":"lani-pallister-opens-australias-commonwealth-games-tally-with-400m-freestyle-gold-commonwealth-games-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/821608\/","title":{"rendered":"Lani Pallister opens Australia\u2019s Commonwealth Games tally with 400m freestyle gold | Commonwealth Games 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Lani Pallister has opened Australia\u2019s medal tally at the Glasgow <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/commonwealth-games\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Commonwealth Games<\/a> by winning the 400m freestyle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Pallister clocked three minutes 59.56 seconds to easily beat the fastest qualifier, New Zealand\u2019s Erika Fairweather.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Fellow Australian Jenna Forrester won the bronze medal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">While the only swimmer to go under four minutes in the final, Pallister was outside the Games record of 3:58.06 set by Ariarne Titmus in Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The 24-year-old took out the first final of the Games swimming program early on Saturday morning (AEST) after qualifying second-fastest in the morning session.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">One of the biggest names in Australia\u2019s Glasgow team dominated her final after cruising through qualifying.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Pallister is also favourite to win the 800m and 1500m freestyle, and will also contest the 200m freestyle and the 4x200m freestyle relay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">She has overcome a series of health challenges to emerge as one of the new stars of Australian swimming.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">After Covid-19 cruelled Pallister\u2019s Paris Olympics \u2013 she qualified for the three distance freestyle events, but only managed to swim in the 800m \u2013 Glasgow looms as her breakout event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lani Pallister has opened Australia\u2019s medal tally at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games by winning the 400m freestyle. Pallister&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-821608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821608","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=821608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}