In a furious down-and-back sprint, Chalmers rallied on the return lap to win with a time of 47.58 seconds.
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Chalmers triumphed in 47.58 seconds – 0.22s ahead of Belgium’s silver medallist Pieter Timmers.
“I feel great about getting another medal”, said Adrian, the American who barely advanced out of the preliminaries but almost pulled off the first back-to-back titles in the 100 since Pieter van den Hoogenband in 2000 and ’04.
The Australian swimmer secured the gold medal in the men’s 100-meter freestyle Wednesday night, but first he crossed paths with Kevin Durant.
Chalmers also showed promise in AFL football – his father, Brett, had a 75-game career with Port Adelaide and Adelaide – and was told a year ago to choose between the two sports.
Trailing seventh at the turn, Chalmers powered through the field in the last 50 metres to become the first Australian man to win the event since Mike Wenden at the Mexico City Games in 1968.
Still coming for the 19-year-old is the defence of the 800m freestyle gold she won in London.
He represented Immanuel College in South Australia past year, playing a handful of games for the first XI before going down with a lower leg injury. I knew I had a small chance to go for the medals so this is just incredible.
American Josh Prenot, who came into the Games atop the 2016 world rankings, was second in 2:07.53 and Russia’s Anton Chupkov was third in 2:07.70. Canada took the bronze in 7:45.39. He is also four-time victor of the “Champion of the Pool” title at Immanuel College’s annual swimming carnival.
“I said to him you can be a swimmer first and then a footballer, but you can’t do it the other way around as you can’t be a competitive swimmer when you’re 28”, grandmother Julie Bagnell told The Australian newspaper.
The teenager from suburban Washington has one more race to go, and it might be the biggest lock of all.
It was after that when Chalmers turned his entire focus to swimming and the Rio Olympics.
The men’s rugby sevens saw a day of upsets, with New Zealand losing to Japan in the groups before being eliminated in the quarter-finals by Fiji, who are chasing their country’s first Olympic medal.
A gold one, at that.
Chalmers’ victory was not the only shock of the night in the pool with Kazakhstan’s Dmitry Balandin claiming gold in the men’s 200-meter breaststroke.
“I’m very proud to win Kazakhstan’s first medal and make history for my country”, said the 21-year-old from Almaty.
“That’s one of my things during my warm-up – I’ll always have a footy with me”.
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Elsewhere in the pool, Michael Phelps returned from his heroics on Tuesday, when he won his record 20th and 21st gold medals, to safely reach the final of the 200m individual medley on Thursday.
