Cameron McEvoy is redefining what’s possible in the pool, making the extraordinary seem almost routine. His recent 50-metre freestyle world record, set earlier this year at the China Open, wasn’t just a milestone; for McEvoy, it was a launchpad. “I definitely think I can get faster,” he stated upon his return from China, a declaration that sounds both audacious and utterly convincing coming from the reigning Olympic champion. Tonight’s Australian swimming trials promise to be a must-watch event, particularly given the venue: the Sydney Olympic pool, a pool with a reputation for being exceptionally “fast.”
The Sydney Olympic pool has a storied history of hosting record-breaking swims. Since its opening in 1994, an impressive 37 long-course world records have been set within its waters. The men’s 50-metre freestyle world record itself has been shattered three times at this very venue, all by Eamon Sullivan in 2008, a period marked by the advent of advanced swimsuit technology. However, of those 37 records, only one currently stands: Kaylee McKeown’s 200-metre backstroke. In contrast, Budapest’s Danube Arena and Fukuoka’s competition pool each boast six current world records. The question on everyone’s mind is whether McEvoy can add the men’s 50-metre freestyle to Sydney’s list of enduring records tonight.
“On paper, there’s definitely room to improve,” McEvoy mused. “Whether that happens on an execution point of view, I can’t be so certain. Even on the training side of things, I’m constantly refining it and developing it. The underlying skeleton is always the same, but the actual day-to-day representation of what that looks like; there’s many different forms that can take. So a part of the game is just rolling the dice on a new approach every season and seeing what comes with that too, which is really exciting and gives a lot more purpose than just chasing times and medals as well. So there’s a lot more to do.”
A Brief History of the Sprint King’s Domain
Before McEvoy’s astonishing performance in Shenzhen, the 50-metre freestyle world record had stood as a seemingly insurmountable barrier for 16 years. It was one of the last remaining records from the “super-suit” era, a time that feels both distant and like a relic of a technologically driven future. Prior to the swimsuit innovation race of the late 2000s, the 50-metre world record had only been lowered four times in the 19 years following Matt Biondi’s 1988 Seoul Olympic record. American Tom Jager bettered it three times, followed by Russia’s Alexander Popov, a swimmer who epitomised the anti-super suit philosophy, clocking 21.64 in basic Speedo briefs and without a cap in Moscow in 2000.
The landscape shifted dramatically with the introduction of the super-suit era. On February 17, 2008, Eamon Sullivan set a new mark of 21.56 at Homebush. Just 23 months later, César Cielo obliterated the record with a 20.91. This period saw the record fall five times as swimmers donned suits that covered their torsos and extended to their ankles. Astonishingly, it had taken 19 years for swimmers to shave 0.5 seconds off the record pre-super suit, while during the super-suit era, an incredible 0.73 seconds was erased in under two years.
McEvoy’s “Extreme” Approach to Training
Progress in sport can be achieved through various avenues: technological advancements, questionable practices, or through sheer innovation in training methodologies. It’s the latter that McEvoy has embraced to perfect his 50-metre racing. His approach, while not entirely novel – British specialist Mark Foster championed a less-is-more regime 30 years ago with great success – has been taken to an unprecedented level of specificity.
“There’s a lot of different ways, from a day-to-day perspective, that this training can go,” McEvoy explained when asked about the time it took to reach this point under his new regimen. “Because it’d never been done before, I had to be the guinea pig to trial these out. The past four seasons, I had done something, I got a result, but then there was other stuff that I hadn’t yet exposed myself to that I wanted to just at least see what would happen if I did. I spent the first four seasons pivoting and doing, on the surface, rather different stuff just to gather as much information as I could. Off the back of the world championships last year, I’d got to a point where I’d learnt enough and I could really put together something that put all of the good qualities from all of those approaches into one singular one, which is what I’ve done and it’s paid off. Surprisingly, it’s a little bit more leaning into the extreme side of things, even with respect to what I’ve already been doing.”
Deconstructing the “Extreme”
So, what does “extreme” mean in McEvoy’s training philosophy? “Before China Open, I hadn’t done any rep past 25 metres,” he revealed. “I’ve been in a strength and power block, a lot of my energy had been around protecting that type of stimulus. So in the water, it was all 25 metres. If you take the dive out, my first stroke set after 10 [metres], really I only go on 15 metres of swimming in one go with 10-plus minutes’ rest in between each rep.”
This minimal yardage is a radical departure from traditional swim coaching, which often prioritises high volume. McEvoy’s weekly mileage is a fraction of what was once considered standard. “I’d be lucky to go over one-and-a-half kilometres a week in the water, over anywhere between two to four sessions,” he stated. “The rest of the time is spent in the gym working on mobility, working on general strength and power — which is a stark contrast to my 30 to 70 kilometres a week that I’ve done traditionally in the past. They were for a spread of events, but I’ve always been a sprinter. It’s very, very different.”
While this approach might raise concerns about sprint endurance, McEvoy himself admitted the final 10 metres of his record-breaking swim were a significant challenge. “There was a stark contrast in how amazing the first 30 metres felt and how much of a fight the last 10 metres was,” he noted with a grin. However, the sheer speed generated in the initial phase carried him through. The implication is clear: if McEvoy can continue to refine this hyper-specific approach, future record attempts could become the norm.
The Verdict on McEvoy’s Method
Australian Dolphins head coach Rohan Taylor acknowledges the success of McEvoy’s low-distance strategy but cautions that it’s not a universal solution. “I think there does need to be looking into what is enough, but also where are they in their swimming journey,” Taylor commented. “Cam’s one of the best … he’s our Australian record holder in the 100 [freestyle], he is world-class in the 200 free, and so he has that background and he’s technically really, really superior. I think that adds to what he’s doing, and so it’s the right time for him. The jury’s out on whether a young kid can come in and start training from that perspective and get to where he [Cam] is.”
Taylor’s perspective is crucial. McEvoy’s method is not a shortcut but a highly refined optimisation for an already elite athlete. McEvoy also holds the Australian 100-metre freestyle record, set at 47.04 in 2016. “I think there’s an amount of aquatic fitness you need to get with your technique to be able to sustain the type of training loads that you need,” Taylor continued. “I’m not a physiologist and a bio-mechanist from that point of view, but from my own coaching experience, there’s garbage yardage and then there’s specificity. So what’s the specificity you need to do? With a young athlete, you want to develop their technique so it’s sound and it’s conditioned and it can hold up. But I would encourage exploration. I think we want to explore what we can do if we just keep sticking to the same old things with the same results. The old philosophy that my mentor told me is if you’re going to play a piano and be a concert pianist, you don’t practise the trumpet, you practise the piano as often as you can and be an expert at it. And I think this is a perfect example of that. To be honest, that’s the kind of stuff that goes into some of our best swimmers in the world when there are events, whether it’s a 50 all the way up to 1,500, they’re really specific about the work they do and do exactly what they need to do. I think what we’re seeing here is something special.”
McEvoy himself is acutely aware of the precision required. “I’d say I am hyper-specific,” he confirmed. “I’ve spent a lot of time understanding basically every metre of a 50 metres, what goes into it, how the body responds at that point in time and basically trying to transform that into some form of training stimulus. Hyper-specificity is really what I’ve been doing.”
His innovative, counter-intuitive training regime is prompting a re-evaluation of established swimming principles. As César Cielo, the Brazilian sprinter whose record McEvoy eclipsed, stated in congratulating him, “‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’” McEvoy has indeed built that model, and now, he’s poised to discover just how far – and how fast – he can push its boundaries.
