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Cameron McEvoy knew he was fast, but he surprised both himself and the world of elite swimming when he hit the wall at the end of the 50m freestyle at the China Open on Friday. The clock read 20.88sec, securing the Australian a lifelong goal.
The Queenslander had broken a longstanding world record, set in the era of now-banned super-suits, by three hundredths of a second.
“That was more of a target for the end of this season, so to have hit it at the moment in March is really special,” he said on his return to Brisbane on Wednesday.
“I’ve got the one side of me, which is the scientific side of like, ‘OK, there’s a little bit of low-hanging fruit there, maybe I can go quicker’. And then the other side, which is the realisation of a childhood dream.”
The 31-year-old swimmer has had a career like few others, making his Olympic debut in London as a teenager in 2012. He won bronze medals in relays in Rio and Tokyo, but didn’t break through for 50m gold until Paris in 2024 as a 30-year-old, an age widely considered past the peak for elite sprinters.
His belated rise to swimming’s summit, which has also seen him win two world championship gold medals and one silver in the splash-and-dash 50m, has come about since a rethink of his training.
McEvoy has abandoned long pool sessions, and instead focused on strength training and short, explosive sets that mimic the requirements of the event. But this year has brought an even more radical approach.
“I had an off-season which was mainly strength development, and I’ve barely done much swimming since the [August] World Champs last year, up until this comp.
“And then this comp was meant to be the transition door into going into more of a sprint-focused regime, but because I got the world record and I’ve made steps, the idea is just to double down on this and not change it, see how far this can actually take me.”
The previous 50m world record-holder, César Cielo, congratulated the Australian on social media for his “incredible” swim.
“I saw a phrase a while ago that perfectly captures what you’ve been doing,” said the Brazilian, who set the previous mark in 2009. “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Even McEvoy himself appeared taken aback on Wednesday by how quickly he has improved, and he said he wanted to continue to test how far his new approach would take him.
“It is, surprisingly, a little bit more leaning into the extreme side of things, even with respect to what I’ve already been doing.
“I’m going to lean into continuing the strength of development in the gym and not really increasing the amount of sprinting I do in the water, whereas in the past, this time of year, I’d be upping that type of volume.
“I’m pretty excited to see where that goes.”
McEvoy said he receives messages every week from both elite athletes interested in his program, as well as former swimmers who have come back to the sport intrigued by reformulated training.
“They saw what I was doing, decided to come back and just give it a go, and the amount of them that are saying that they’re doing lifetime best times and they’re deep into their 40s, compared to when they were training full-time in their teens, it’s pretty incredible.”
He will be 38 by the time the 2032 Olympics begins. “Hopefully the result in China proves that people in their 30s can definitely sprint and continue to sprint,” he said.
“I’ve still got my eyes on LA, I definitely have my eyes on the home Games here in Brisbane, and so I’ll just keep at it every year and just take it one step at a time.”
