By: Henry Wang

The current world and Olympic champion in the women’s 400-meter freestyle won’t even be attending the event on Saturday at the world championships held in Budapest. Instead, 21-year-old Ariarne Titmus will be fast asleep and in Melbourne, Australia, over 9,000 miles away from the competition.

In an interview with Ariarne Titmus, she stated, “I’ll definitely be asleep. I’ll probably look up the results, look at the splits, but I really won’t pay too much attention to it.”

Titmus, although breaking a world record less than a month ago, won’t be going to one of the most impactful swims meets of the year. Her explanation of why she won’t attend is straightforward: Titmus doesn’t think that she needs to be in the world.

“I just really wanted to think about the long term,” she explained, “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.”

In the 2019 world, Titmus rose to fame after beating 3-time defending champion Katie Ledecky in the 400-meter freestyle event and winning the gold. Two years later, Titmus firmly earned herself a title as the “best middle-distance swimmer in the world” at the Tokyo Olympics, adding two gold medals in the 200- and 400- freestyle events, silver in an individual race, and a bronze medal for a relay.

Some swimmers, if they were in Titmus’s shoes, may have been excited to get a chance to defend their world champion title against Ledecky. However, Titmus isn’t like some swimmers. She’s decided not to go to worlds.

Instead of looking towards worlds, Titmus’s eyes are looking toward the Commonwealth Games where she will compete in England sometime in late July.

Ledecky on the other hand has decided against traveling to Australia in August for a swim meet that could result in another Ledecky vs. Titmus match.

Dean Boxall, Ariarne Titmus’s coach, revealed that he and Titmus both had knowledge about the chatter going around about her decisions for her schedules along with the public desire for another Titmus-Ledecky clash. “They’re not in the inner sanctum,” Boxall said. “The inner sanctum has a plan. She knows what she needs to do. She knows it’s all about the Olympics.”

Titmus was born in a small city in Tasmania called Launceston. Even from an early age Titmus was in the water. “We always had a backyard pool,” she explained. When the 2008 Beijing Olympics rolled around, Titmus watched Australian swimmers like Stephanie Rice and Libby Trickett in awe. “I was just glued to the TV,” she stated.

At the good age of seven, Titmus joined a local swim club and started racing. She got better and better and better at swimming. “Every year, I went to the next thing and before I knew it, I was on the national team,” she explained.

Steve and Robyn, Titmus’s parents, had the idea of moving to help support their daughter’s promising career. This was because Tasmania had a lack of swimming pools along with coaches and teachers that could nourish a swimmer’s potential to get into the top leagues. But when Titmus heard this, she initially opposed it. “I was so content with my life down there, with my friends and school and everything,” she revealed.

However, in 2015, after she was accepted on the junior world championship’s Australian team, Titmus realized that she had to follow her dreams.

“I just thought, I really have no choice,” she explained. “Like, if I really want to make something of myself, I have no choice.”

After some weeks, Titmus’s family relocated themselves to Brisbane, Australia. After that, Titmus started to steadily close the gap between her and Ledecky.

“When we first came together, Arnie was 38 seconds off Katie in the 800-meter freestyle, she was 16 seconds off Katie in the 400 and she was eight seconds off Katie in the 200,” Boxall explained. “We never even thought about the Olympics. We were just getting on that journey and making sure she was getting better and better.”

At the 2017 championships, Titmus won her first major medal: a bronze medal she won in a relay. She then went on to knock Ledecky off her throne two years later at the 400-meter championships.

Now in the present, Titmus has beaten Ledecky three times in the last five finals she has attended. The rivalry seemed to take a more personal turn when 25-year-old Ledecky, after being beaten at the last world championships, did not acknowledge her rival.

“Definitely when we’re in the pool racing, she’s my biggest rival,” Titmus explained. “It doesn’t really matter who she is: I want to beat her. 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.”

In the 400-meter freestyle at the Tokyo Olympics, the showdown between Ledecky and Titmus was just beginning. Ledecky came out with a fast entrance, and halfway through the race, she was a body length over the others.

Titmus then caught up with two laps to go, and by the final turn, she gained the lead. “I just had to have trust in myself,” she explained.

Whether it is in or outside of the pool, Titmus has no end to confidence. So that is why she decided to be fast asleep on Saturday while halfway around the world, while the 2022 world championships are about to begin.

“I’m glad that I can make those decisions,” Titmus explained. “I don’t focus too much on other people. I really just worry about myself.