Casting aside a tumultuous period out of the water,,Queensland’s star of the pool embodied a confident,determined persona as she broke down why the Paris showcase was poised to be her most palpable.
Ariarne Titmus has revealed she was better placed now than three years ago to make an emphatic Olympic Games statement.Tim Goode/PA
The 23-year-old launched her comeback in December in her bid to peak in time for Olympic selection,and has boldly declared she was primed to produce even greater results than the two gold medals she secured in Tokyo.
The 400m freestyle world record holder admits that when she boarded the plane to Japan she was not completely prepared for the enormity of the occasion,and despite her success,is adamant there are more peaks for her to attain.
“Going into Tokyo I didn’t know what to expect,I was very naive and kind of going in quite open-eyed and wasn’t very fearless,” Titmus said.
“I was a first-time Olympian,and I’d been on the national team for five years,and I’d experienced other championships internationally,but an Olympic Games is an entirely different thing.
“The eyes are on you,the pressure … I know how to deal with that now,I know how exhausting it was in Tokyo to deal with that,and I think I put myself in better stead this time around to be able to perform in those circumstances.
“I’m doing things with more confidence,and I’m going into a second Games with a different outlook ... I have the framework and I know it works,and I’ve done this before.”
Titmus made the decision to sit out of Australia’s World Championships team in February,determined to focus on the Olympics away from the spotlight.
She was joined on the sidelines by a rising star who could arguably be her greatest obstacle in defending her 200m freestyle gold medal:
Mollie O’Callaghan reacts after winning the 200m freestyle final at the World Swimming Championships last year.AP Photos/Lee Jin-man
O’Callaghan triumphed over Titmus at last week’s New South Wales State Championships in the event,in which she already held the world record from last year’s World Aquatic Championships in Fukuoka[1:52.85].
But Titmus revealed she had transformed her training under charismatic coach Dean Boxall,vowing to leave nothing in the tank ahead of June’s Olympic trials in Brisbane.
“There’s no point holding anything back at an Olympic trials,” she says. “You’ve got nothing to lose.”
While she stopped short of elaborating on how her preparation had evolved,the message delivered and the vibrancy in her voice issued an ominous warning to her international rivals.
“I’m probably doing things in training I haven’t done before,which gives me confidence. I think as you get older you learn that the path you have to go on to get to where you want to go,” Titmus said.
“There’s definitely sessions I will do for the rest of my career that I know work,but as you get faster it’s harder to get better.
“When you’re swimming around world record times,it’s very small intricacies that you have to try and pick up on to get better.
“It’s about finding those finer details,it’s not like when you’re younger where you can just drop time like that,it’s trying to be more creative in training,finding new ways to get better,thinking outside the box.
“Everyone around the world is training hard,and it’s about finding better ways to improve and try to do things that other people aren’t doing.”
