Day 8 Recap – Four more Aussie swimming medals

Kaylee McKeown (Sandro Halank, Wikimedia Commons)

Australia continues to have outstanding success in swimming at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021. On Saturday, they had four more medals in the pool, and now have 18 of their 27 medals overall in swimming.

The top Australian swimmer on day eight was Kaylee McKeown of Redcliffe, who won the gold medal in the women’s 200 metre backstroke. McKeown, who also won the gold medal in the women’s 10o metre backstroke, posted a winning time of 2:04.68. Two Aussie swimmers actually landed on the podium in the women’s 200 metre final, as Emily Seebohm of Adelaide won the bronze medal with a time of 2:06.17. The silver medalist was women’s 100 metre backstroke world champion, Kylie Masse of Canada, who had a second place time of 2:05.42. Masse actually led most of the race, but was passed by McKeown with approximately 30 metres left.

In the women’s 800 metre freestyle swimming event, Ariarne Titmus of Launceston won the silver medal with a time of 8:13.83. It was Titmus’s third individual medal at the 2020 Olympic Games as she previously won gold in the women’s 200 metres and 400 metres. Katie Ledecky of the United States won the gold medal with a time of 8:12.57.

Ledecky, who won the gold medal in the women’s 800 metres at the 2012 Olympic Games in London and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, becomes only the third female swimmer ever to win three straight gold medals in an individual event at an Olympic Games. The others are Dawn Fraser of Balmain, Australia, who won a gold medal at three straight Olympic Games from 1956 to 1964 in the women’s 100 metre freestyle, and Krisztina Egerssegi of Hungary, who won a gold medal at three straight Olympic Games from 1988 to 1996 in the women’s 200 metre backstroke.

In the women’s mixed 4×100 metre medley relay, Australia won the bronze medal with a time of 3:38.95. Great Britain won gold and China won silver. Great Britain’s time of 3:37.58 was a world record. It was the fifth world record set at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021. The other four were from the Australian women’s 4×100 metre  freestyle relay (3:29.69), China in the women’s 4×200 metre freestyle relay (7:40.33), Tatjana Schoenmaker of South Africa in the women’s 200 metre breaststroke (2:18.95), and Caeleb Dressel of the United States in the men’s 100 metre butterfly (49.45).

Australia’s other medal on Saturday came in tennis, and Ashleigh Barty and John Peers did not even have to play their match to win Olympic bronze. That is because Novak Djokovic and Nina Stojanovic of Serbia withdrew from the match. Djokovic had lost his men’s bronze medal match earlier on Saturday to Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain in men’s singles.

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