Swimming world championships rocked by double disqualification drama
The short course world swimming championships were rocked by extraordinary scenes on Wednesday night when two teams were disqualified from the mixed 4x50m relay final for illegal changeovers. The Netherlands had initially touched the wall in third place but were stripped of the bronze medal.
That came after Germany were also disqualified for the same reason. Officials ruled that both countries had one swimmer who jumped into the water too early during a changeover.
'INSANE': Emma McKeon makes history as Aussies break world record
'DISGUSTING': Swimming champ in ugly furore over medal photo
"This is very, very tight," Ian Thorpe said in commentary for Channel 9. "The rule is, this technology is so close that you are allowed to go negative .003 of a second."
After watching a replay, Giaan Rooney said: "To the naked eye that looked OK," Thorpe added: " To me as well. 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."
The Netherlands coaching staff could be seen looking rather unimpressed by the fact they'd had the bronze medal taken away. The USA won the event with a time of 1:35.15 - a new short course world record. Italy took the silver while Canada were elevated to bronze after the Dutch were disqualified.
The drama came after Australia failed to even make the final due to a brutal selection blunder in the heats. The Aussies were among the favourites to claim a medal in the event but didn't even make the final.
Head coach Rohan Taylor selected Bradley Woodward (backstroke), Grayson Bell (breaststroke), Alex Perkins (butterfly) and Meg Harris (freestyle) for the heats on Wednesday morning, resting bigger names like Emma McKeon and Kyle Chalmers so they could be fresh for the final. While it's not uncommon to rest the bigger stars until the finals in relay events, the selection gamble backfired spectacularly.
The Aussies finished second in the first heat with a time of 1:39.41, but they watched on helplessly as they were eclipsed by eight other teams to finish 10th overall. Only the top eight teams advanced to the final, meaning Australia missed out.
Australia finished 0.4 seconds behind Canada, who went on to win the bronze despite qualifying eight-fastest. Thorpe was critical of the Aussies' selection blunder, saying the heat swimmers would have been “disappointed they haven’t been able to set up their teammates for tonight’s race”.
Lani Pallister crowned Australia's new golden girl
It wasn't all bad news for Australia on Wednesday, with Lani Pallister winning gold in the 800m freestyle before helping the Aussies smash the world record in the 4x200m freestyle relay. Kaylee McKeown added another gold in the 100m backstroke.
Pallister now has three gold medals at the meet after winning the 400m freestyle. And she has a chance to make it four with the 1500m freestyle to come.
"It's the first time I've raced a 4x200m final so I really wanted to put my foot on the line and show the coaches who had faith in me I was able to do the job," Pallister told reporters. “I will probably never swim a 200m individually but to jump in and do a relay with these girls. It’s just insane.
"It's such an incredible opportunity to race on home soil and come away with a world record. I've been doing a lot of work around backing up so I had long enough between the 800 and the relay to be able to recover and put up a performance like I did tonight."
Click here to sign up to our newsletter for all the latest and breaking stories from Australia and around the world.