A relaxed Ariarne Titmus is aiming to make the second Olympic team of her career this week as the 400m Freestyle defending champion headlines the six-day Australian Selection Trials in future Olympic-host city Brisbane.
Forty years after last hosting an Olympic selection trials, Australia’s best 750 swimmers will race off in Brisbane this week at the one and only selection event for Paris 2024. Headlining the event is reigning Olympic champion and World Record holder Ariarne Titmus, who will aim to book her spot in the Women’s 400m Freestyle, before adding the 200m Freestyle and 800m Freestyle later in the week.
Speaking to the media on the eve of the trials, Titmus reflected on the contrast between her mindset when heading into the Tokyo 2020 trials and this week’s event at the Brisbane Aquatic Centre.
“I don’t have that kind of pressure this time around; I’ve been an Olympian before, I’ve won Olympic gold, and I think the one thing I’ve taken from my last Olympics experience is that once you become an Olympic champion, you can carry this aura with you into these trials,” said Titmus.
“I know what to do. All I have to do is swim eight laps, four laps, or sixteen laps. I’m the most trained I can possibly be to do that.
“At the end of the day we’re just swimming and I just try to take everything I’ve learnt over the past three years, and all the experience I’ve gotten from international racing, really it is just another race and so I’m looking forward to ticking that box and then racing my best in six weeks’ time.”
Heading into the Tokyo trials, Titmus had achieved almost everything over the eight-lap race except an Olympic medal and world record. She was the reigning 400m Freestyle world champion, Commonwealth Games champion, short course world champion, and world record holder in the 25m pool.
Exiting the pool after her 400m Freestyle qualifying swim at the Olympic selection trials in Adelaide in 2021, a wave of emotion hit the then 20-year-old as she finally added ‘Olympian’ to her resume.
“This has been a long time coming… I didn’t really know what this would mean until it happened,” Titmus said, breaking down in tears.
“I made my first team, the team after Rio, world short course 2016, so it’s been five years on the team and I feel like I’ve done most things that being on the Australian team means, but the one thing I haven’t done is become an Olympian.”
“I remember watching Steph Rice win three gold in Beijing and that was the year I started training in squads, and to think that is going to happen, and I’m going to be an Olympian, is really exciting.”
In Tokyo Titmus then went on to emulate her childhood icon to win Australia’s first female individual gold in the pool since Rice in 2008. The Australian overtook then World Record holder Katie Ledecky over the final fifty metres in the 400m Freestyle in Tokyo to deny the American back-to-back Olympic golds.
Speaking to the media before this week’s Olympic Trials, Titmus appeared relaxed and pragmatic about the forthcoming week and a likely second Olympic Games.
“I think going to your first Olympic Games there is a lot of unknowns and there is a sense of naivety… but knowing what to expect now and having done it before, you can take a lot of learnings from that and put it into practice,” said Titmus.
“You can find smarter and more efficient ways to get better. I’ve learned a lot about my swimming over the past three years. I’ve grown so much as an athlete, but more so as a person, and I think that has contributed to how I’m feeling in the water and my hunger and motivation levels.
“I feel like after the last Olympics you need to have a moment to let that hunger build back up, and it’s definitely there, and I’m just really excited.”
Should Titmus do what is expected this week and qualify for the Australian team, it will set up another tantalising Women’s 400m Freestyle match-up in Paris.
Katie Ledecky, who claimed her fourth 400m Freestyle world title in 2022 in Titmus’s absence, is likely to progress through next week’s US Selection Trials, with former World Record holder Summer McIntosh and reigning world champion Erika Fairweather also in the mix.
“Winning an Olympic gold is something that you can never replicate in your life other than that one moment and it goes away quite quickly – that instant feeling,” said Titmus.
“You can feel a sense of achievement beyond the actual moment, but that initial moment is very hard to replicate in your life. I’m very motivated to feel that way I felt in Tokyo.”