Great Britain touched the wall first Sunday afternoon in prelims of the men’s 400 freestyle relay at the World Aquatics Championships. But the scoreboard had a dour surprise for them.

The pre-meet favorites were disqualified for a false start by the third swimmer, Jacob Whittle, with a reaction time of minus-.04 seconds at the Marine Messe Hall in Fukuoka, Japan. They had touched in 3:10.47, clearly getting the win in the first of two circle-seeded heats and well up on the winner of the final heat, the Americans. The U.S. went 3:11.63, which would’ve only cemented the British status as favorites.

The jump came on the handoff from legs two to three, from Matthew Richards to Whittle. Richards had just finished up an outstanding second leg with a split of 46.89 seconds, and Lewis Burras put them out in front with a split of 48.61 on the opening leg. Duncan Scott swam the anchor.

Whittle clocked in at 47.37 on his split. Scott went 47.60.

The time would’ve not only earned the top seed in Sunday’s final but rewritten the British record by a massive margin of more than six tenths of a second.

Queensland teenager Sam Short has joined swimming royalty to become the fifth Australian swimmer to win the men’s 400 metres freestyle with a slashing Midas touch in the opening event on the opening night of the World Aquatics Championship in Fukuoka.

The 19-year-old clocked the fourth fastest time in history, touching the wall in 3:40.60 to beat Tokyo Olympic champion Ahmed Hafnaoui (Tunisia) just 0.10 behind in 3:40.70 –  – with Germany’s silver medallist from 2022 Lukas Martens,  taking the bronze in 3:42.20.
 

Only Germany’s world record holder Paul Biedermann (3:40.07), Australia’s three-time world champion Ian Thorpe (3:40.08) and China’s Sun Yang (3:40.14) have swum faster.

Short joins fellow Australians, Kieren Perkins (1994), Thorpe (1998, 2001 and 2003), Grant Hackett (2005) and Elijah Winnington (2022) on a coveted list of Australian swimming greats to have won the 400m world title.

Winnington, who won the title in Budapest last year was 7th in tonight’s final in 3:44.26.

Short wasted no time taking the race by the throat, taking the lead in 53.58 at the 100m mark, through the 200m in 1:49.29 and the 300m in 2:45.49, all the while it was Hafnaoui, who out-touched Australia’s Jack McLoughlin too snatch the Olympic gold in Tokyo in 2021, who stalked Short.

 

How does the cliché go? All things must come to an end? After 20-plus years, that reality hit the swimming world – and beyond – on Sunday night when Michael Phelps’ reign as a world-record holder ceased. Wait, really? Is that possible? The guy who elevated the sport to never-before-seen levels is no longer the fastest man in any specific discipline? It doesn’t seem possible.

Ah, but that is where we are in late July 2023, seven years after Phelps last competed at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. And it took a magnificent performance for the GOAT’s name to be removed from the record books. Truthfully, only that type of effort was appropriate given the influence the now 38-year-old has had on the sport for more than two decades.
 

For the past year, since he was crowned world champion last summer in Budapest, Frenchman Leon Marchand has been touted as the man who would take down Phelps’ iconic – and last-standing – world record. We’re talking about the 4:03.84 clocking the American legend delivered in the 400-meter individual medley as the opening act of his Beijing Blitz in 2008. Yep, that thing was set 15 years ago.
 

Australia in the women’s 400 freestyle relay? That can only mean a dominant performance incoming. Dating back to 2012, Australia has captured three consecutive Olympic gold medals in the event plus four world titles, with the only two defeats coming in close finishes against the United States. But this time, the group of Mollie O’Callaghan, Shayna Jack, Meg Harris and Emma McKeon put forth a relay that bordered on perfection.

The squad that earned Olympic gold in the women’s 400 freestyle relay at the Tokyo Olympics two years ago was an all-star squad. Sisters Bronte Campbell and Cate Campbell had both captured individual world titles in the 100 free while McKeon was days away from becoming the second-fastest performer in history on the way to Olympic gold. That team set a world record at 3:29.69, becoming the first team to ever crack 3:30.

And this group, with no Campbell sister in sight, swam almost two seconds faster. The Aussies were certainly capable of that sort of effort if each swimmer swam their absolute best, but the nerves of a World Championships final often knock one or two swimmers off their A-game. Not this time.

O’Callaghan went out in 52.08, knocking four tenths off her own best time and moving into a tie for sixth in history. She touched just ahead of Sarah Sjostrom, the Swedish world-record holder in the 100 free.

Jack, who led off in an identical 52.08 in prelims, swam the fastest split of the entire race at 51.69 on the second leg, extending the lead to 1.78 seconds.