By: Angela Jin
Last Saturday, seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky won the women’s 400-meter freestyle at swimming’s world championships. However, her strong Australian opponent, Ariarne Titmus – who broke Ledecky’s medal streak and won the gold medal in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics–did not race.
The competition was held in Duna Arena in Budapest, Hungary, where there’s an eight-hour time difference from Brisbane, Australia, Ariarne Titmus’s hometown. When reporters asked Titmus why she didn’t participate in the world championships, she simply said, “I’ll definitely be asleep.” She later added, “I’ll probably look up the results, look at the splits, but I really won’t pay too much attention to it.”
Despite breaking a world record a few months ago in the Australian championships and becoming Ledecky’s biggest rival, winning gold medals in the 200- and 400-meter freestyle in the Tokyo Olympics, and gaining a reputation as the world’s best middle-distance swimmer, Titmus decided to skip the 2022 world championships to focus her attention on the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“I just really wanted to think about the long term, and I really don’t care,” she stated. “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.”
Titmus’s coach, Dean Boxall, is also aware of her bold decision and understands that people all around the world were excited to see the Titmus-Ledecky showdowns. “They’re not in the inner sanctum,” Boxall said in an interview. “The inner sanctum has a plan. She knows what she needs to do. She knows it’s all about the Olympics.”
Ariarne Titmus dreamed about becoming a professional swimmer since childhood. After years of hard work, the Titmus family relocated Ariarne, who was 14 years old, to Australia’s biggest city, Brisbane. Two years later, she finally won bronze at the 2017 world championship. Ledecky won gold.
“Definitely when we’re in the pool racing, she’s my biggest rival, it doesn’t really matter who she is: I want to beat her,” Titmus stated. “But then as a person, I seriously respect her. I know what it’s taken to get to this level, and she’s been at this level since I was 12 years old. I respect the work that she’s put into swimming. She’s changed female swimming.”
Source:
https://upjobsnews.com/why-is-australias-ariarne-titmus-not-swimming-at-the-worlds-more-news-here/