Aussie poised to strike

IF YOU listen to the Americans, Australian sprint king Kyle Chalmers has no chance of beating Caeleb Dressel at next week’s world championships in South Korea.

The US media has already anointed the heavily tattooed Dressel as the next Michael Phelps so they simply won’t hear of him losing to anyone, let alone a self-described Aussie battler who shocked himself as much as everyone else when he won the 100m freestyle at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

And that’s just the way Chalmers likes it.

As you might expect from someone who keeps pet reptiles, the South Australian is as laid-back as the snakes and lizards he shares his home with so he’s not going around beating his own chest about what he’s achieved.

“I’ve done all right so far,” he said. “Just an Aussie punter trying to get through.”

What Chalmers describes as good, everyone else would rightly call great, but that’s how the Big Tuna rolls. He only turned 21 last month, but he already has the Olympic, Commonwealth and Pac-Pac titles and only the world championship has eluded him, though there’s a valid excuse.

“It is the one missing from my resumé [but] I’ve never had an individual swim at a world champs before,” he said.

Chalmers skipped the last world championships in 2017 to undergo surgery to repair a heart condition as Dressel not only won the blue-riband event but scooped up seven gold medals, prompting the inevitable comparison with Phelps. That’s made him the favourite to win the lot again in Gwangju, but the recent formguide suggests he might have his work cut out.

Chalmers beat Dressel head-to-head at last year’s Pan Pacs in Japan and is currently way ahead of the American on times this season, ranked No.1 in the world, but he’s more than content to play the role of Rocky Balboa if the Americans say Dressel is Apollo Creed.