Live weblog: Swimming world championships get underway in Singapore with Summer McIntosh Katie Ledecky

SINGAPORE — Fifteen magical minutes. That was all it took for Australia to show opening night time of the 2025 World Aquatics Championships from frustration right into a reiteration it stays a powerhouse on the earth of swimming.

The Dolphins loved pleasant déjà vu in Singapore, Australia’s males’s and ladies’s 100m relay groups each leaping for pleasure on the pool deck inside fast succession, sending a warning shot to the United States that it will not be having issues so simply at this 12 months’s extremely anticipated world championships.

The swim of the night time belonged to Dolphins veteran Kyle Chalmers, who as soon as once more expertly anchored his nation and staked his newest declare at being the best sprinter to emerge from Down Under.

The 100m gold medalist from Rio went from half-a-body-length behind in third place to comfortably first within the area of 40m, earlier than powering away within the remaining levels to the touch the wall in a blistering break up time of 46.53s and end the work of skilled crew Flynn Southam, Kai Taylor, and Maximillian Giuliani in 3:08.97, a brand new file on the world championships.

It units up a tantalising 100m freestyle conflict later within the meet between Chalmers and China’s Pan Zhanle, who famously beat the South Australian to gold in Paris 12 months in the past with an otherworldly swim.

In the ladies’s race, five-time Olympic champion Mollie O’Callaghan gave Australia an early benefit with a field-best lead off leg, however the Americans slowly reeled them in over the subsequent 250m, regardless of robust swims from Meg Harris and Milla Jansen. American anchor Torri Huske briefly put her fingertips in entrance with 75m to swim, forcing Olivia Wunsch to dig deep and discover an additional gear within the remaining 50m.

Australia’s triumph within the girls’s relay solely highlights the nation’s depth. Neither Jansen (18) nor Wunsch (19) featured within the group’s gold medal swim on the Olympics final 12 months, however a altering of the guard has been known as for with the retirements of stalwarts Emma McKeon, Cate Campbell, and Madi Wilson.

Earlier in this system, Sam Short missed gold within the males’s 400m freestyle remaining by simply 0.02s to reigning Olympic champion Lukas Martens, whereas Lani Pallister pale within the girls’s 400m freestyle race to complete fourth behind Canadian celebrity Summer McIntosh, China’s Li Bingjie, and American icon Katie Ledecky.

Here’s how night time one in Singapore unfolded: