Aussie Star Kaylee McKeown Claims World Female Swimmer of the Year Honors (Full Voting)
Kaylee McKeown qualified for her first World Championship final in 2017, weeks after her 16th birthday, and she performed admirably, finishing fourth in the 200 backstroke behind a trio of veterans and breaking the world junior record. Two years later, she reached the individual medal podium for the first time, earning 200 back silver.
A further two years down the line, after her first Olympics were delayed one year by COVID-19 and after her father, Sholto, had passed away following a two-year battle with brain cancer, McKeown reached the pinnacle. She captured Olympic gold medals at the 2020 Games in Tokyo (actually held in 2021) in the 100 and 200 back in addition to lowering the world record in the 100-meter race at the Australian Olympic Trials. She also led off a golden Australian effort in the 400 medley relay. However, her extraordinary efforts that year were overshadowed, particularly with Aussie teammates Emma McKeon and Ariarne Titmus walking away with even more lofty Olympic medal totals.
In relative terms, 2022 was a down year for McKeown, but even so, she won her first individual world title in the 200 back and claimed her first global medal in an individual medley race before winning six medals—four of them gold—at the Commonwealth Games. In 2023, however, McKeown shined brighter than ever. She achieved a treble no female swimmer had ever before accomplished.
McKeown won all three backstroke events at the World Championships, edging top rival Regan Smith in three superb duels. Since 50-meter stroke events were added to the World Championships in 2001, no swimmer had won all three distances in one stroke at one meet until this year, when Qin Haiyang accomplished the feat in men’s breaststroke and McKeown did so in women’s backstroke.
In addition to her three golds, McKeown also won two medley relay silver medals in Fukuoka, leading off for the Aussies in both events. McKeown was among the favorites for the 200 IM world title as well, but in a controversial moment, she was disqualified in the semifinals of the event for an illegal turn. That DQ came on Day 1 of the meet, but McKeown’s fortunes would quickly change for the better, as she knocked off remarkable performances left and right.
But it was not just that one week in Fukuoka when McKeown established herself as the best swimmer in the world. This year, McKeown broke world records in all three backstroke events, becoming the first woman ever to hold all three simultaneously.
At the New South Wales State Championships in March, McKeown lowered Smith’s four-year-old global standard in the 200 back, a sterling finish lifting McKeown to a time of 2:03.14 that eclipsed Smith’s previous mark by 21-hundredths. Then, after her World Champs efforts were complete, McKeown dominated her signature stroke on the World Cup circuit, claiming titles in all three events in Berlin, Athens and Budapest. At the final stop, she swam a time of 26.86 in the 50 back—12-hundredths under Liu Xiang’s five-year-old world record of 26.98—and a day later, McKeown knocked the same amount of time off her own 100 back world record, hitting the pad in 57.33.
For all her gold medals and accomplishments, McKeown earns the title of World Swimmer of the Year for the first time. She previously placed fourth in this category in 2021, behind McKeon, Titmus and Katie Ledecky. McKeown is the seventh Australian to earn this award, joining Shane Gould (1971-72), Samantha Riley (1994), Leisel Jones (2005-06), Stephanie Rice (2008), McKeon (2021) and Titmus (2022).
Australia has now captured this award three years in a row with three different swimmers, which no other country has ever accomplished. In the 1980s, East German swimmers Petra Schneider, Ute Geweniger and Kristin Otto won the award in successive years, but all East German swimmers were later stripped of their honors because of the country’s state-sponsored doping program.
McKeown also joins a long line of Australian swimmers who have captured Female Pacific Rim Swimmer of the Year honors. Since the award was established in 1995, Aussies have won the award 24 times out of 28, and McKeown is the 14th different woman to earn first place.
And so well deserved. She is an amazing athlete.