Sunshine Coast Olympic hopeful Kaylee McKeown has stunned the “virtual’’ Australian short-course swimming championships by breaking a six-year-old 200m backstroke world record.
The national short-course championships, originally due to be held in Melbourne in October, have moved to a “virtual’ platform’’ for 2020.
This sees swimmers not lining up against each other but competing at venues in Brisbane – where McKeown swam – Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Hobart.
Each event is raced as close to simultaneously as possible with results sent to a centralised platform, where the swimmers are ranked to determine their positions.
McKeown, a former Pacific Lutheran College student who swims for University of the Sunshine Coast Spartans, relished the challenge.
The 19-year-old clocked 1 minute 58.94 on Saturday to beat the 2014 time of 1:59.23 set by Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu.
“Short course is something we don’t get to do very often so I was excited to see what I could put up after some solid training this year,’’ McKeown said.
“I headed over to my teammates and my coach and they said ‘You just got a world-record’ and I was like, ‘What?’.
“I didn’t actually know till a few minutes later.’’
USC Spartans coach Chris Mooney told sunshinecoastnews.com.au he was very proud of McKeown.
“It’s quite special, but I’m not surprised she went so well because I see her do a lot of special things every single day,’’ he said.
McKeown has her eye on next year’s Tokyo Olympics, having won gold over long course in the 50m, silver in the 100m and bronze in the 200m backstroke at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires.
She went on to claim senior world championship silvers in the 200m backstroke and 4x100m medley in Gwangju, South Korea, last year.
Under this year’s “virtual” national championship rules, winners will not be awarded a title, but because the event is run by Swimming Australia any records can be ratified by world governing body FINA.
The difference between short and long-course swimming is not about the distance, it’s the length of the pool. If the pool is 25m, it’s short course, and 50m it’s long course.
One of the youngest members of the Australian Dolphins team, Kaylee made her debut aged 15 after qualifying for the World Championships in 2017.
Although she narrowly missed out on a medal, the rising star finished fourth and set a new world junior record.
Kaylee, who joined her older sister Taylor on the Dolphins team, won her first major international medal at the 2019 World Championships where she set a new PB to claim silver in the 200m backstroke.
STAY TUNED to sunshinecoastnews.com.au for a full wrap-up of the USC Spartans’ amazing effort at the titles.
