By Ian Ransom
MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia head coach Rohan Taylor says Ariarne Titmus is tracking in the right direction ahead of her world championships showdown with Summer McIntosh despite falling well short of snatching back her 400m freestyle world record this week.
Titmus qualified for Fukuoka with a dominant 400m win at world championship trials in Melbourne on Tuesday but her time of three minutes, 58.47 seconds was more than two seconds outside McIntosh’s new world best of 3:56.08 set in March.
Stung by the loss of her world record, Titmus said she had hoped to swim a faster time at the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre in front of an expectant home crowd.
Taylor, however, was happy with Titmus’s progress and expected her to make up ground at training before Fukuoka.
“Her 400, I thought, was really good,” Taylor told reporters at the trials on Thursday.
“She’s tracking in the right direction considering off the back of the Olympics (she had an) extended time out.
“I think since you had, obviously, a world record broken and it kind of brings a bit more attention back to (whether) she’s off that pace.
“I look at it and say, ‘Well, you’re only two seconds (off) and you’re really building towards another five weeks for the worlds’.
“The plan is always just to peak in Paris.”
Titmus’s 400m swim was almost a postscript to the 22-year-old’s revelation she might retire after next year’s Paris Olympics, where she will hope to successfully defend her Tokyo title as well as her 200m freestyle gold medal.
She said she had spoken to her coach Dean Boxall about the possibility of bowing out in Paris.
That came as a surprise to Taylor, who said he had not had any conversations about it with the swimmer or coach.
“Paris is what’s in front of us,” added Taylor.
“We all just talked about getting there and being best prepared for that.”
Australian five-times world champion Matt Welsh said it was no surprise that Titmus wanted to focus on Paris and not look beyond the Games.
“It doesn’t mean Paris is the end,” Welsh, who won a backstroke world title at Fukuoka in 2001, told Reuters.
“It’s just that’s her end-game at the moment.
“We’re bred as athletes to have a finite thing to work towards, not just a general goal of: ‘I just want to be fast’.
“I think she’s in a pretty good head-space.”
(Reporting by Ian Ransom in Melbourne; Editing by Peter Rutherford)
