Paris: In the end, the much-hyped battle between Australia and Team USA was a fizzer. Since last year’s world championships, when Cate Campbell went after the USA’s national anthem and penchant for a cowbell in a tongue-in-cheek interview on Channel Nine, the narrative for these Games has been about how “our greatest ever swim team” was going to wipe the floor with them in Paris. The swimmers didn’t give it much energy nor oxygen, but an obsession with winning more gold than our significantly larger rival quickly developed.
It was dangerous rhetoric that was setting them up to fail. It says everything about the ethos within the team, and the character of the current bunch, that they could ignore the hype and perform as they did in Paris. Heading into the final night of a program that seems to get longer with each Olympics, Australia had won seven golds and the USA had six.
American Bobby Finke ’s world-record win in the men’s 1500m drew them level. The final race of the night, the women’s 4x100m medley final, would decide it. Team USA won comfortably, with Australia second.
Bobby Finke drew the US level with Australia on seven gold medals when he won the men’s 1500-metre freestyle. Credit: AP Our swim team needn’t compare themselves to our biggest rivals to gauge whether it was a successful meet. Australia might have fallen two short of the nine gold won in Tokyo, but it was a successful meet, continuing the sport’s upward trajectory after lean times in .