TRIALS NIGHT 3: JACK SET TO DEBUT; RECORDS FALL

JAMIE Jack, pack your bags.
The 23-year-old finally secured a spot on his first senior Dolphins team by clocking a season-best (21.52) and second place in the men’s 50m free final, comfortably under the SA qualifying time of 21.77, and moving him into 7th in the world this season.

The Professor, and world champion, Cam McEvoy had predicted as much for Night 3 of the Australian Swimming Trials at Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre and while it wasn’t the perfect performance he executed earlier this year, McEvoy’s winning 21.32 also secured Glasgow selection.

The 32-year-old McEvoy swimmer stunned the world when he broke the super-suited world record at the China Open in March in a time of 20.88. He said post-race that it was a surprise to him as well, and that his goal is to re-break the mark at the Commonwealth Games in July.

But it was Jack who was the day’s surprise packet – first nudging out McEvoy to qualify fastest for the final and then bursting into tears as he facetimed sister – and Dolphin stalwart Shayna – while waiting to be interviewed by media.

Campbells, McKeons, McKeowns, the Woodhouses and now the Jacks seem likely to join the exclusive Dolphin sibling club but will have to wait a few more days to find out.

For Shayna, the fire to swim on after the Paris Olympics was ignited by the dream of being on team with her younger 23-year-old brother.
“In complete honesty, the reason I show up now is my brother,” Shayna said.

“He’s done the work and I’m really, really proud of him.”

McEvoy may have predicted Jamie Jack’s senior rise but no one saw reigning Olympic and world champion Mollie O’Callaghan flirting with the world record through the final of the women’s 200m freestyle and despite the world record line pulling away from her in the last 15 metres, she still clocked one of the fastest swims ever.

The 22-year-old put up a time of 1:52.86, the third-fastest swim of her career and the fifth-fastest in history to reset her world-leading time of 1:53.52 set at the China Open in March. Lani Pallister finished second in 1:53.65 to also add another swim to her Commonwealth Games dance card.

Sam Short, proving he will be hard to beat as the swimmer of this meet, then knocked more than a second off his Commonwealth, Oceanian and Australian Record of 7:37.76, set at the 2023 World Championships to touch in 7:36.73.

Short has now won the 200m, 400, 800m with the 1500m to go and said he would swim them all in Glasgow should he qualify for his final event on Friday.

In other events:

• Backing up from a sensational swim in the 100m breaststroke last night that saw her punch her ticket to Glasgow, Sienna Toohey won the 50m sprint in 30.57 but touched just outside of the qualifying time of 30.37. For the 17-year-old from Albury, the excitement of making her first Commonwealth Games is matched by her parents who officially booked their tickets to Glasgow today.
• Sam Williamson, the Australian record holder and former world champion, showed the men’s 50m breaststroke field how it’s done when he stopped the clock in 26.61 to bank a second Glasgow swim. Gideon Burnes, 20, marked himself as one to watch when he placed second (27.37) ahead of Josh Anderson, 21, (27.60).

 

S10 SPRINT SHOWDOWN
It was a clash of champions in the men’s 50m freestyle multi-class final with Australia’s S10 sprint sensations Tom Gallagher and Rowan Crothers going stroke-for-stroke for a ticket to California.

Paris Paralympic champion Gallagher (23.62) claimed the win by one tenth of a second over the top of Crothers (23.72).

“It’s a relief to get the QT in the morning and my coach Dean (Boxall) just said before (the final) to keep it similar … we’ve got work to do in the next couple of weeks and I’m excited to get stuck into it and get the job done in California,” Gallagher said.

Their Singapore World Championships teammate Alex Tuckfield also went under the men’s 50m freestyle S10 qualifying time and will join the S10 sprinters at the Para Pan Pacific Championships in California.