Take a bow Emma: Australia’s golden Olympic queen dominated the pool in Tokyo

Emma McKeon, claim your crown ⁠— with a whopping seven Tokyo 2020 medals, and eleven across two Olympic Games, there can be no denying the Aussie swim star is our queen of the pool after her domination over the past nine days.

“Greatest Of All Time” gets thrown around a lot in sport.

Here though, when talking about Emma McKeon, it’s rather fitting. No other Olympian is walking away from Tokyo with seven medals in their luggage. It’s the equal most by any woman in Olympic history too. You have to go all the way back to 1952, to Russia’s Maria Gorokhoskaya, to see similar.

For Australia, she’s bowling down records left and right. No Australian has ever won 10 or more medals. McKeon already has five golds too ⁠— equal with Ian Thorpe.

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McKeon has been everywhere in the pool too. Individual swim events, medley races, freestyle, butterfly; the events all fell before Wollongong’s golden girl.

Across her nine days of events, McKeon scored three new Olympic records, on top of her massive medal haul. One came in the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay. Another, in her own 100m freestyle heat. The last, in the 50m semi-finals.

The 27-year-old ended her historic Olympic Games with an exclamation point in the 50-metres freestyle, passing Thorpe and Leisel Jones in the process. She swam 23.81, just ahead of Sweden’s Sarah Sjoestroem (24.07) and Demark’s Pernille Blume (24.21).

All up, McKeon won gold in the 4x100m relay, 100m freestyle, and women’s 4x100m mixed relay, as well as her Sunday win in 50m freestyle. She also took bronze in the 100m butterfly, 4x200m relay, and mixed 4x100m medley relay.

It was, all up, one of the best individual Olympics for any swimmer ever.

She’s racing for Australia ⁠— of course ⁠— but if McKeon was her own country, she would currently sit 13th in the Tokyo tally, just head of Switzerland and Canada, and behind the Czech Republic.

Swimming Women's 50m Freestyle Final

McKeon isn’t one to brag either. Despite all her records, Wollongong’s golden swimming goddess says she’s surprised at just how dominant her Tokyo meet truly has been.

“It’s very surreal,” she said.

“I think the whole week, I’ve been kind of keeping my emotions just at a certain level; I knew I had so much more racing to do. Yeah, it’s very surreal to be in that kind of company [Jones and Thorpe]. I don’t usually say things like this, but coming here, I wanted to win. I came here for gold.

“To finish now and I’ve got, what, four of them? I can’t believe it. It does mean a lot to me. It’s overwhelming. It’s pretty special, and it’s pretty cool.”

McKeon said she was inspired by the achievements of past Australian Olympians, and “what they’d been able to achieve” against the best competitors in the world. She “grew up wanting to do something similar.”

Now she well and truly has.

“It’s an honour,” she said,” because I know I’ve worked so hard for it. It really is very surreal. It went by very quickly. I’m just very happy with how the meet went.”

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McKeon’s Tokyo tour is now over, but the memories won’t be forgotten.

There’s one thing we’re sure about too, here at The Sporting Base; everyone here in Australia just watched the rise of a new swim queen, already ascended into the immortal pantheon of Olympic heroes from games past.

And, even more special, McKeon went above.

11 total Olympic medals is an incredible achievement; and one she can add to in Paris come 2024, too.