Aussie caught in fresh disqualification drama at swimming world championships

Australia's Brendon Smith has become the latest victim of a rules crackdown at the short course world swimming championships. The event in Melbourne has seen a number of disqualifications dished out to bewildered swimmers, with Smith falling foul of officials on Saturday morning.

Smith was disqualified from the men’s 400m medley, with officials ruling that the Aussie did not transition properly while turning from the backstroke to breaststroke leg. Medley swimmers must transition predominantly on their backs, which officials ruled Smith did not.

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Smith's disqualification was the latest in a series of rule breaches at the world championships, with officials seemingly cracking down at the event. There were two disqualifications in the mixed 4x50m relay final earlier this week, with two swimmers found to have jumped into the pool too early on changeovers.

The Netherlands had touched the wall in third place, but were stripped of the bronze medal after the disqualification. That came after Germany were also disqualified for the same reason.

Speaking in commentary for Channel 9, Aussie great Giaan Rooney said she'd never seen so many disqualifications. The Olympic gold medallist said she believed officials were targeting the breaststrokers in particular.

"Most of them have come in breaststroke, so they must be targeting that double kick underwater," she said. "It's amazing how many."

Ian Thorpe said of the relay disqualifications: "This is very, very tight. The rule is, this technology is so close that you are allowed to go negative .003 of a second.

"The rule is that you have to have a finger-tip, very much the tip of the finger touching the wall while someone - the end of their toe - is touching the blocks."

Isaac Cooper robbed of gold medal in controversial scenes

The world championships were rocked by more controversy on Friday night when Aussie teenager Isaac Cooper was denied a gold medal due to a technical glitch. Cooper touched the wall first in the 50m backstroke final, but the race didn't count because half the field had stopped after hearing an alarm sound at the start of the race.

What initially appeared to be a false-start was soon revealed as a technical error from officials, who eventually decided the race would need to be re-swum an hour later. Cruelly for Cooper, the 18-year-old had expended the majority of his energy in the initial swim and could only finish second in the latter race.

His initial time of 22.49 seconds would have won gold and set a new junior world record. But he could only produce 22.73 in his second effort to pick up the silver medal behind Ryan Murphy of America.

"I was pretty disappointed the way that it shook out," Murphy told reporters. "I really feel for Isaac - he's 18 and going for your first individual world title and that's huge and an incredible accomplishment. I'm going to talk to him and let him know that in my mind he won that race."

Thorpe was gobsmacked at how the controversy had played out and wondered why there was no rope that usually comes down at the 15m mark to tell the athletes to stop swimming. “They’ve got to notify the athletes,” he said in commentary. “This is rubbish. They have to notify them. There should’ve been a drop. This is a false start at the 15m mark. So that all athletes knew. There is a huge disadvantage to those that have continued.

Thorpe added after the race: "I thought it was a horrible thing that happened. Unfortunately in sport it isn't who deserves it the most. Sport often isn't fair. We try and make it as fair as possible for everyone, whether that's our rules around doping or our rules around a situation like this."

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