Max Giuliani has won one final medal to provide a silver lining for Australia’s swimmers at a record-busting world short course championships which are destined to go down in history as the ‘Gretchen Walsh Games’.
Giuliani won a superb silver in the men’s 200m freestyle final on the last day of the championships in Budapest on Sunday as Australia’s Dolphins finished with a dozen medals, headed by the two golds won by Lani Pallister and Elijah Winnington earlier in the week.
But in a championships where a record 30 new world marks were set in the Duna Arena’s 25-metre pool, the Aussies could only play a bit part amid the amazing exploits of 21-year-old American Walsh, who set 11 world records over six days – nine individual and two more in relays.
She completed the most astounding week’s work in short course annals by breaking the 50m freestyle mark in the dash final in 22.83sec, then returned for the last women’s event, swimming the butterfly leg in the 4x100m medley relay, as the US quartet blasted to another landmark in 3min 40.41sec.
It was her seventh world title of the week, while her 11 records earned her a bonus of $237,500 in total.
“I’ve had a really good week, I’m always going to cherish it,” said the Nashville swimmer, who was the brightest star of a hugely dominant US team that swept the board with 18 golds, 13 silver and eight bronze – 39 medals in all.
For Giuliani, the 21-year-old who nearly gave up the sport to take up a trade in plumbing before grabbing a chance to travel to Gold Coast for “one final crack” at resurrecting his career, his efforts must have seemed worth it after he finished second behind another US world record breaker Luke Hobson.
The Tasmanian clocked an Oceanian and national record of 1min 40.36sec, ploughing his way through from fifth after the first length to second at the 150m mark.
But he couldn’t live with Hobson, who set a new mark of 1:38.61, to slash three-tenths of a second off his own record.
Pallister, gold medallist in the women’s 800m freestyle, ended her team-best championships — in which she also won two silvers and a bronze — by battling home for fourth in the 200m freestyle (1:51.75) behind Hong Kong winner, Siobhan Haughey, who took her third straight title in 1:50.62.
Pallister’s teammate Leah Neale finished seventh in that final (1:53.21).
Meg Harris (23.73) came home fifth in the 50m free behind Walsh, while Iona Anderson (2:04.60) was seventh in a milestone final, with another American flyer Regan Smith completing her backstroke treble in the 200m with a new global mark of 1:58.04.
