ELIJAH RULES
CHALMERS BEATEN
ELIJAH Winnington could feel Olympic and Commonwealth champion Kyle Chalmers breathing down his neck on a terrifying final lap but the 18year-old held his nerve to all but book a Pan Pacs ticket by winning the 200m freestyle in Adelaide last night.
The Gold Coast swimmer turned for home locked on the same time as his training partner Alexander Graham and Chalmers loomed large even from sixth, but Winnington held on to beat Chalmers by just 0.03 of a second in 1min 47.01sec.
“Kyle is a world-class swimmer and I was breathing away from him but you can feel him creeping up alongside you,” Winnington said.
“In that last 10m my coach has put it into me day in and day out that it’s all heart and all legs and no pain, you’ve just got to put your head down and go for it and it paid off.”
The race also featured Olympian Tom FraserHolmes who returned to competitive swimming with fifth in the 200m freestyle.
Fraser-Holmes trained alone for his year-long ban for missing three drug tests and only joined a squad on the Gold Coast eight weeks ago, but produced a mighty swim with 1:48.06 to shadow training partner Dan Smith who was fourth.
“I’m kicking myself a little bit because I felt like I got better as I went along,” FraserHolmes said.
“I couldn’t have given it any more but that’s going to come with race experience, I was kicking myself because I know I can win and that’s my mindset sometimes.
“But I couldn’t have gone any harder or prepared any better with the circumstances I had. I’m proud of the way I swam but more proud of the way I developed as a person and the relationships I formed and created, I used my time really wisely and this for me was always the build-up for Tokyo.”