In what was a historic Olympics for the Australian contingent, one athlete who shone at Paris in 2024 was Kyle Chalmers, the pool star leaving the event with three medals, including silver in the 100m freestyle.
His appearance in the 100m finals turned out to be his most viral moment of the Paris Olympics, not just due to his performance in the pool, but also because of a controversial alleged feud with winner Pan Zhanle.
The Chinese swimmer obliterated the world record en route to the gold medal, but he was also reported to have claimed Chalmers snubbed him at the games, leading to an explosion of criticism and abuse towards the Aussie.
Nearly a month on from the Paris Olympics, Chalmers has said that he and Zhanle have worked through their differences, and detailed how the Chinese swimmer's actions helped subside the tide of anger directed towards him.
Kyle Chalmers opens up about feud with Pan Zhanle
Chalmers' reported feud with Zhanle quickly became one of the most controversial storylines of the Paris games, with the Aussie subjected to brutal social media harassment following reports that he had in some way disrespected the gold medalist.
But according to Chalmers, there was never any issue between the swimmers, and that they had even had a positive relationship up to and during the Olympics.
"From my end, I found it really weird, there was never any animosity or feud going on," Chalmers told Sporting News Australia.
"Every interaction I'd ever had with him was positive, especially the 100 freestyle. I spoke to him in the marshalling room before the race, which doesn't normally happen in that 100 freestyle. You wouldn't normally speak to your competitors all that much, but we spoke.
"I congratulated him in the pool after the race was swum and then again on the podium, and then we had a good chat. I was with his coaches and him. We had a translator, had a really good chat about the race, about he was saying that I was his idol, and he never thought that he'd be in a race with me, and now he's beating me. It was a cool interaction, I think, for me.
"Then [reports of the feud] come out after the 100 freestyle. I don't know whether it was just translated or taken wrong, I'm not really sure, but I reached out to him on Instagram, and I'm glad that we were able to resolve that.
"He then went to the media and said that they'd got it wrong, which obviously takes a lot of courage as well. I've got nothing but respect for him as an athlete and as a person for doing something like that because it was very stressful."
After Chalmers was initially accused of disrespecting Zhanle, he said that he was inundated with criticism and negative messages from Chinese swimming fans, with some even escalating to threats of violence.
"I was receiving thousands and thousands and thousands of very passionate Chinese supporters sending me pretty rude messages or lots of death threats and stuff as well, which was quite scary to go through during the Olympic Games because you just, I guess, don't know how serious they actually are," he said.
"I was lucky to have a good support team around me. But as soon as Pan came out and said that in the media, it all died down, which was good."
Chalmers denies reports of 'slow pool' in Paris
In the early days of the 2024 Olympic swimming program, there were reports of Paris having a 'slow pool', which was partially attributed to the pool being built much shallower than typical World Aquatics pools.
However, Chalmers told The Sporting News that he didn't buy in to these theories, particularly after being part of the race that saw Pan Zhanle oblierate the 100m freestyle world record by nearly half a second - the same amount of time that was shaved off between 2008 and Zhanle's 2024 pre-Olympic world record set at the World Championships.
"Yeah, there was reports of that, and that's what I started to hear, I guess, those first few days," said Chalmers of Paris having a slow pool.
"But I think as the meet progressed, people started to swim a whole lot faster. I mean, there were world records broken, Olympic records broken. So for me, I look at that and go, 'Well, it's not a slow pool if people are managing to succeed and swim that fast.'
"So in my opinion, probably not the slowest pool, but I also don't look into those things. I've never been a person that's been too focused on times. It's all about swimming the race and trying to get your hand on the wall first and trying to win. For me, that's not something I would have looked into too much.
"I think it's a time that I never dreamed possible in the 100 freestyle. Like I've said a few times now, I thought that I've been capable of swimming 46.9 if I got it right on the day. That was the world record that stood for a very long time since 2008. To now see a 46.4, I think it's exciting for the 100 Freestyle, my event, because I know that not only myself, but the boys from around the world are going to have to swim a whole lot faster if they're going to be competitive in that event.
"I think that everyone is now going to be training to swim [46 seconds]. So I think that the event is going to progress very quickly now. So it was cool to be a part of that race for sure.
"Once you see one person do it, I think it makes us all believe now it is possible. I do think that the event is going to progress quite rapidly now, and we'll start to see a lot more people swimming 46 seconds for sure."
