Australian swimming star Kaylee McKeown has announced a self-imposed social media ban for the Paris Olympics as she hunts down an incredibly rare triple treat of individual gold medals.
The 23-year-old enters as the defending champion in the 100m and 200m backstroke, while she has added the 200m medley to her program after recording the fastest time of the year to date.
Fellow swimmer Shane Gould is the only Australian to win three individual golds at a single Olympics.
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McKeown will also race medley relays in Paris and could equal Dolphins teammate Emma McKeon’s four golds (two from relays) in Tokyo three years ago.
Yet there is a battle raging inside the Queenslander to keep herself steady while accepting the Olympics stand alone as the peak of her career.
“Everyone, kind of, always puts the Olympics as this big, kind of, thing,” McKeown said last week.
“For me, I have just learned that it’s a pool in a different city … it’s just me diving in and doing what I can do best.”
McKeown linked up with master coach Michael Bohl in early 2022 and they speak glowingly of each other.
But the mentor said his swimmer’s fearless public game face belied an athlete’s angst.
“She is a bit of an anxious person,” he said.
“It’s just trying to keep her calm. She just wants to do so well, it’s just trying to keep her as calm as you can in that environment.
“We connect quite well. I coached her sister for a while, Taylor, and I know the family quite well and spending time with people you get to know them better.
“So it’s just knowing what buttons to push. Lifting her up when she’s down and then when she gets too cocky, I will bring her back down again. Just keeping her level.”
Bohl believes McKeown’s Olympic defence rests in the mental, not physical.
“She has just got to be ready. It’s handling the environment,” he said.
“We always talk about the Olympics being that unpredictable environment and there’s so much going on, it’s chaotic.
“And the people that are able to keep the calmness and level-headed when that situation is around you are the people that get the best of themselves there.
“That’s the battle in my mind. It’s the mental challenge, it’s not the physical challenge.
“Being in an environment where everyone knows it’s once every four years, it’s difficult, it’s not easy to get those great results.”
And so with that in mind McKeown has already gone dark — more than three days before her first heat.
“I won’t be on socials this week,” she wrote on Thursday night in Paris.
“Would like to thank everyone for all the well wishes so far.”
McKeown, speaking last week, said she already felt a difference in herself heading into Paris compared to Tokyo three years ago.
“As you get older, you grow and you learn more,” she said.
“From the last Olympics to this Olympics, I’ve learned a lot and I’ve grown a lot … I’m more mature and more in control of my emotions.”
McKeown won 4x100m medley relay gold and mixed 4x100m medley relay bronze in Tokyo in addition to her two individual backstroke golds.
With four medals in her pocket already she isn’t looking at the bigger picture, but Bohl sees a potential all-time legend.
“She’s still finding a way but she’s got a lot more years I think ahead of her,” he said.
“She’s only still very young … she’s got at least another (Olympic) cycle left in her if she wants to.
“You can just see her just continuing to improve over the next four years. She has just got so many events that she could do.”
Bohl believes McKeown could also be world-class in the 200m and 400m freestyle, perhaps also the 400m medley.
“She has got a lot of different things that she can target,” he said.
“She likes the variety of doing different things and having those different challenges.”
McKeown has dominated her discipline since taking American Regan Smith’s 100m backstroke world record three years ago.
But Smith has been lurking and the 22-year-old reclaimed the benchmark at the last month’s US Olympic trials.
“The better the sport is, the more it brings out in individuals,” said McKeown, who still owns the two fastest 200m backstroke times ever.
“I’m expecting world records to be broken … it makes me better as an athlete and that’s all that I can really ask for.
“This rivalry has always been there but it’s no different to me racing anybody else in the world.”
– with Steve Larkin, AAP