Australian sprint king Kyle Chalmers booked his pass for his third Olympic Games on Thursday night, but he required four cortisone injections and four visits to the physio daily to get up for the occasion.
A long-term battle with bulging discs in his back and a degenerative spine, which didn’t become public knowledge until after Thursday night’s race, had put the Olympic and world champion in a precarious place just days out from Australia’s Paris 2024 trials.
Chalmers took out the men’s 100m freestyle final at Brisbane Aquatic Centre, stopping the clock at 47.75 seconds as he guaranteed his spot on the Dolphins team.
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It wasn’t one of his quicker swims — his personal best is 47.08 and he had clocked 47.63 at the national championships on the Gold Coast in April — but he dipped under Swimming Australia’s Olympic entry standard of 48.06.
He made no secret of his physical troubles on his way back to the dressing rooms.
“I’ve got bulged discs in my back and a bit of a degenerative spine, so I’ve now had 10 cortisones in my back throughout my career,” Chalmers said.
“I’ve been doing some landscape labouring up on the Sunny Coast and I decided I wouldn’t go to work on the Friday [two weeks ago] and I’d rest for trials, and I kind of just spent a day laying on the couch, which my body’s clearly not used to. I got pretty stiff.
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“Then Saturday morning I tried to do a dive and it just all spasmed and locked up, so I saw physios and doctors and the best thing I could do was get four cortisones in my lower back and try to get moving again.
“I’ve been seeing the physio before racing, after racing. I’ve been seeing the physio four times a day since I’ve been here, trying to loosen everything off and activate everything so I’m able to swim.
“I’ve put on a pretty brave face to be able to get through it.”
When asked if he’d doubted whether he could finish in the top two and hit the time required, he didn’t hesitate.
“Yeah, for sure,” the 25-year-old admitted.
“It definitely hasn’t been easy at all. It’s been pretty hard.”
Chalmers backed himself to get his body right for the Olympics, beginning in six weeks’ time. The South Australian will be chasing his second Olympic gold medal.
In defence of his Rio 2016 title, he finished just 0.04 of a second behind the gold medallist at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, losing to American Caeleb Dressel.