Lani Pallister and Sam Short, Australia's stars of the pool in 2026, have continued their golden year with more success at the national short course championships in Sydney.
The pair who'd already scooped a hatful of Commonwealth and Pan Pacific titles made it five Australian titles between them in a week at Olympic Park Aquatic Centre and are intent on ending their year with more gold at the world short course championships in Beijing in December.
Pallister, having already lifted the 200m and 1500m freestyle titles, powered to victory over 400 metres on the penultimate night of racing on Thursday, as did Short, who'd already won the 800m.
Short was in imperious mood as he took the 16-lap title in 3min 35.16sec, easily inside the Beijing qualifying time of 3:39.14, which convinced him the world record of 3:32.25 is sure to fall at the famed Water Cube venue that hosted the 2008 Olympic swimming programme.
“I think that's gone in a couple of months at world short course," said the Brisbane star Short. "I haven’t swum much short course … in some ways it keeps you hungry,”
Former short course 400m world champ Elijah Winnington, though, was just outside the time needed, as he clocked 3:39.24 to finish runner-up.
Pallister was in a class of her own as she prevailed in 3:54.55, the fastest women's time ever recorded in Australia, shaving 0.03sec off the old mark set by Ariarne Titmus six years ago.
Runner-up Jenna Forrester, who'd already won 400m individual medley gold in a national record, was 0.65sec outside of qualifying time.
Both stars will now start altitude training - but in very different fashion.
Pallister will travel over 12,000km to Flagstaff in the US, while Short will only need to mosey on over to his bedroom in Brisbane to prepare in an altitude tent for four weeks.
“Off to altitude in a couple of weeks' time, and then, just pretty much getting back into full training, knuckling down and targeting World Champs,” explained Pallister, who reckoned she had been "pretty shocked" by how fast she'd swum in the 200 metres.
In the women's 50m, Iona Anderson continued her breakthrough year by completing her sweep of the backstroke events, clocking 25.88sec as she gets closer to Kaylee McKeown's Australian record of 25.35.
