“I’m definitely sleeping,” 21-year-old Ariane Titmus said earlier this month. (The race will start at 1:30 in Australia.) “I’ll probably look at the results, look at the split, but I really won’t pay much attention to it.”
Despite breaking a world record less than a month ago, despite being in some of the best form of his youth career and the prospect of a showdown in Hungary with his biggest rival, Katie Ledecky of the United States, Titmus will be absent. The most important international swimming competition of the year. His reason is simple: Titmus decided he didn’t need to be there.
“I really wanted to think about the long term,” she said. “And I don’t really care – it doesn’t bother me that I’m not going to be in the headlines or the media or the headlines during the World Championships. That’s why I don’t swim. I swim because I love it and I’m the biggest I want to perform on stage, which is an Olympic sport for me.” Titmus’ decision to skip the World Championships is a bold decision.
She first rose to prominence with her performance in the last worlds in 2019, when she upset 15-time world champion and three-time defending champion Ledecky in the 400m freestyle to win gold in the event. Two years later, Titmus cemented his reputation as the world’s best middle-distance swimmer at last summer’s Tokyo Olympics, beating Ledecky to gold medals in the 200- and 400-meter freestyle events (Ledecky won the 800 and 1,500). ) and adding an individual silver and a relay bronze got her impressive medals.
Most swimmers in that position could have been desperate to defend their world title against Ledecky, who has dominated the sport for a decade. But most swimmers are not titmas. Instead of running in the world, she will take part in the Commonwealth Games, a sports gathering of the former British colonies, when they begin in England in late July. (The United States does not participate in that competition.) And it’s unclear when he and Ledecky will be pitted against each other again; Last week, Ledecky indicated he had decided against traveling to Australia in August for a meeting of the two nations billed as a duel in the pool, which would otherwise host a potential Ledecky versus a potential Ledecky.
Titmus Rematch. Which means only a handful of the world’s best swimmers could race before the next Olympics in Paris in 2024 – perhaps the most exciting rivalry in the sport.
Titmus’ coach, Dean Boxall, said that he and Titmus were well aware of their scheduling decisions, as well as Titmus-Ledecky’s appetite for more performances. “They are not in the inner sanctum,” said Boxall of the outer voices. “There’s a plan in the inner sanctum. She knows what she has to do. She knows it’s all about the Olympics.
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