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Olympic Backstroke Champion Kaylee McKeown Just as Elite in Individual Medley
The Tokyo Olympics saw 20-year-old Kaylee McKeown stamp herself as the world’s foremost performer in women’s backstroke. All throughout the leadup to those Games, McKeown challenged the fastest times in history in the 100 and 200 backstroke, and at Australia’s Olympic Trials, she recorded a time of 57.45 in the 100 back to break Regan Smith’s world record. In Tokyo, McKeown won an anticipated showdown with Smith and world champion Kylie Masse in the 100 back before pulling away from Masse to win gold in the 200 back. She won a third gold medal as the leadoff swimmer on Australia’s 400 medley relay squad.
Sure, McKeown’s Olympic performances were somewhat overshadowed by two of her Australian teammates, sprinter Emma McKeon and freestyler Ariarne Titmus, but her efforts in only one stroke had validated McKeown’s top-notch talents — but those swims did not reflect the full scale of McKeown’s abilities.
At those Trials when McKeown broke the 100 back world record and became the third-fastest performer in history, she actually won a third individual title, the 200 IM, and her time was 2:08.19, which made her the eighth-fastest performer in history. Moreover, the time was three tenths faster than the 2:08.52 that Yui Ohashi swam on the way to Olympic gold. After that, it was a no-brainer decision for the Queensland native to consider competing in that event internationally in the future.
As for the 400 IM, McKeown has that event figured out, too. She entered that event at Australia’s National Championships earlier this month in Adelaide and recorded a mark of 4:31.74, three tenths faster than Ohashi’s gold-medal-winning time from Tokyo. In comparing splits between McKeown’s race and the results from the Olympics, the Australian falls 1-2 seconds behind the field on the butterfly before making that up with an enormous backstroke split (1:08.36) and then slightly edging out the field on breaststroke.
McKeown’s time ranks second in the world for 2022 behind the insane 4:29.12 produced by Canadian teenager Summer McIntosh in March, and she is four seconds clear of the third-ranked performer (the USA’s Katie Grimes at 4:36.17), so McKeown would undoubtedly be a medal contender in the 400 IM at the World Championships, but she will not race the event next month in Budapest. However, she will compete in the 400 IM at the Commonwealth Games.
For Worlds, she will return to defend her dominance in the backstroke events while adding the shorter individual medley race. McKeown was about a second off her lifetime-best form at Trials in the 200 IM with a time of 2:09.15, and she is the second-ranked swimmer in the world in that event behind American Alex Walsh (2:07.84). Walsh will be the world-title favorite after she became the first woman since 2019 to break 2:08 in the event, but McKeown and Ohashi look like the only swimmers capable of catching the American.
In the backstroke events, McKeown was also short of her best at the Adelaide championships, but McKeown will head to World Championships ranked first in the world in the 200 back (2:04.64) and second in the world in the 100 back (58.31) behind Smith. She will not be a shoo-in for any world titles (although she is the favorite in both backstroke races), but the combination of Worlds plus Commonwealth Games will give McKeown numerous opportunities to add to her international medal collection and pop off further impressive times.
If she can continue her ascent in the IM events while maintaining her supremacy on her back, McKeown’s standing among the world’s best swimmers will be elevated by the end of the summer.
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