His namesake, the 18-year-old Australian swimming champion, staged a thrilling come-from-behind win in the final of the 100m freestyle on Wednesday night to edge out Belgium’s Pieter Timmers (silver) and American Nathan Adrian (bronze), and leaving Australian pre-Games favourite Cameron McEvoy out of the medals.
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A new swim star has emerged out of Rio in the form of Kyle Chalmers, an 18-year-old Adelaide schoolboy who scored Australia’s first 100m freestyle gold medal in nearly 50 years.
Then Chalmers played a critical role in securing Australia the bronze medal in the final of the 4x100m relay, as he swam the second leg and moved Australia from eighth to second.
Amazing, indeed, although we’re guessing Chalmers’ basketball-playing countrymen won’t be joining the gold medalist in his daily inspirational listening.
Chalmers is the first Australian to win the 100m free since Mike Wenden in Mexico City in 1968.
Fresh off Chalmers’ incredible triumph in the 100 metre freestyle on Wednesday night, Verhaeren has opened up about the conversation with the 18-year-old in which he told him he had to make a choice between pursuing an AFL career or his Olympics dream.
The son of AFL football royalty in Brett Chalmers, he found himself at a fork in the road previous year before making the hard call to spurn a sport that fairly pumps through his veins. Chalmers said that Thorpe penned him a letter of support with sage advice on the eve of his final.
The family was only reunited following the gold medal performance this morning (Australia time). “The best answer I can give is that I can”, said Armstrong, who retired after each of her two previous Olympic wins.
“It’s about 0.6 of a second between the first 16 swimmers, so it’s good to get my hand on the wall and get into the semi-finals tonight”, Irvine said.
“He is someone who I’ve looked up to my whole life”, said Chalmers. Coming into this, I didn’t think it was possible.
Chalmers turned in a seventh-place finish in the semifinal of the 100m freestyle, and many thought he had too much to overcome.
Dmitriy Balandin pulled off a stunning upset in the men’s 200 breaststroke, winning from the eighth lane to put his central Asian country on the swimming medal stand for the first time. “I know that we’ve been beaten a few times”.
“Going onto the horizontal bar I knew what I had to do”, Kohei said.
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Verhaeren made a phone call to Chalmers a year ago when the South Australian was tossing up between pursuing a swimming or AFL career.
