SINGAPORE -- Australia's swimmers gave the blueprint for rapid fire success on night one of these 2025 World Aquatics Championships, winning two spectacular relay gold medals in the space of just 15 minutes. But on Saturday evening, the penultimate night of competition, the Dolphins somehow managed to top that effort with one of their most memorable evenings in the pool.
Nine minutes, the time it takes the average person to shower, was all Australia required to add two more golds to the tally. First, sprint specialist Cameron McEvoy won the men's 50m freestyle, the fastest race in world swimming. Before he had even dried off, Kaylee McKeown stormed home to maintain her dominance in the women's 200m backstroke. Bang, bang!
There wasn't just a sense of déjà vu from opening night of this meet, rather we've seen this exact movie before. On night eight of the Olympic Games in Paris last summer -- a year ago to the day -- McEvoy and McKeown won these two races within -- you guessed it! -- nine minutes of each other, giving Advance Australia Fair a healthy workout over the La Defense Arena speakers.
For McEvoy, who became a father just 23 days ago, he proves unequivocally he's the fastest swimmer on the planet. Period. The 31-year-old Australian sprint specialist only swims one event these days, but boy does he swim it well. It took McEvoy a blistering 21.16 seconds to get from the starting blocks to the opposite end of the pool, touching ahead of Great Britain's Ben Proud and American Jack Alexy to win the race for the second time at the world championships.
And then there's McKeown. When it comes to the backstroke discipline, there's the Australian, and then there's everyone else. McKeown once again demonstrated she simply has no rival in the pool, completing a glorious world championship double on Saturday evening, four nights after having taken out the 100m race in style.
It was a typical McKeown swim. Strong to open, consistent long strokes throughout, and powerful to close. She clocked a new world championship record of 2:03.33 to once again beat American Regan Smith, this time by almost a full second.
"I wasn't feeling too great heading in, a bit of illness and stuff going around, dealing with a bit of a shoulder [injury]. I had to put my best foot forward tonight. I dug really deep and I'm really happy with the time that I posted," said McKeown. "Something I've been really working on is focusing on my own race. I think it really helped me on the outside lane (six), not seeing the other girls around me, and just really focusing on what I've been working on."
Two swims. Two gold medals for Australia. And yet neither McEvoy nor McKeown would likely raise their hand to claim ownership of the nation's swim of the evening.
Night seven in Singapore was supposed to be about Summer McIntosh vs. Katie Ledecky in the women's 800m freestyle final, the latest event dubbed by world media as the 'race of the century'. And while the gruelling 16-lap battle well and truly lived up to the hysteria, it wasn't for the reasons many had predicted.
Australia's Lani Pallister swam the race of her life. She obliterated her personal best by almost five seconds to not only throw a spanner in the works of arguably the sport's two most recognisable faces duking it out for glory, but give herself a realistic chance of causing one of the biggest boilovers in swimming history with just a lap remaining.
It was a swim that brought the brilliant best out of the nine-time Olympic champion. Ledecky found just enough over the final metres to ensure her hand would be on the wall first in a championship record time of 8:05.62s, an agonising 0.36s ahead of Pallister in second place. For Ledecky, the victory made her the first swimmer in history to win seven world championship gold medals in a single event. For Pallister, she collected one of Australia's greatest silver medals of all time.
"They pushed me all the way," said Ledecky of Pallister and McIntosh. "That's pretty incredible, three of us going under 8:10. I just kept telling myself to trust my legs, because I've gotten a bit better at kicking. Just running home at the end. It's the fastest I've ever been at a world championships"
Pallister's performance earned her a fourth medal of the week, having already enjoyed trips to the Singapore podium for third place finishes in the 400m and 1500m freestyle races, as well as helping Australia win gold in the women's 200m freestyle relay.
Here's how night seven at the world championships unfolded: