By: Zoe Hu

In Melbourne, Australia, the women’s 400-meter freestyle final will be swum and won on Saturday. The world and Olympic champion at this event (and the race’s new world record holder), Ariarne Titmus, will be sleeping halfway around the world.

“I’ll definitely be asleep,” Ariarne Titmus, 21, said. “I’ll probably look up the results, look at the splits, but I really won’t pay too much attention to it.”

Her reason for not participating is simple. She decided that she had no need to be there. “I just really wanted to think about the long term,” she said. “And I really don’t care — it doesn’t bother me that I’m not going to be in the headlines or the media or the spotlight when the world championships are on. That’s not why I swim. I swim because I love it and I want to perform on the biggest stage, which for me is the Olympic Games.”

Breaking the world record about a month ago, being in the best form of her career, and also with the possibility of showdown with her rival, Katie Ledecky from the united states, Titmus will not be participating in the biggest international swim meet of this year.

Her choice to not enter the world championships is a brave one. She first gained fame in the last world championships in 2019, where she beat Ledecky, the 15 time world champion and the three time champion of the 400-meter freestyle, to win a gold medal in the event. Two years later, Titmus made sure of her reputation as the greatest middle-distance swimmer in the world, by beating Ledecky to gold medals, in the 200- and 400-meter freestyle events in the Tokyo Olympics.

In or out of the pool, one thing that is not in short supply for Titmus is confidence. That’s the reason she will not be participating in the meet. Ledecky is most likely to take back the 400-freestyle world title. “I’m glad that I can make those decisions,” Titmus said. “I don’t focus too much on other people. I really just worry about myself.”

Link to article: Why Is Ariarne Titmus Not Swimming at the Worlds_ – The N