Australian swimming champion Ariarne Titmus ponders future after Paris 2024

Ariarne Titmus concedes she does not know what the future holds beyond the Paris Olympics as the Australian swimming star attempts to make the most of her time at the top.

The Olympic champion whipped through Tuesday night’s 400m freestyle final in 3:58.47 in the Australian trials at Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre ahead of next month’s meet in Japan.

There, she is prepared to embrace the “underdog” tag against 16-year-old sensation Summer McIntosh, who took the world record from Titmus by clocking 3:56.08 in March, and American great Katie Ledecky.

Titmus, 22, didn’t swim as fast as she had hoped for in Melbourne, though she didn’t fully taper and admitted she and coach Dean Boxall had pondered whether she might be into her final handful of 400m events at her peak.

“When you’re going into a meet like this you always want to take an opportunity to swim as fast as you can,” she said.

“Dean and I had the conversation. I don’t know what I’m going to do after Paris – I plan to continue but you never know – and this could be my fourth-last 400m including Paris and trials and then worlds and this.

“If I decide to end, it could be my fourth-last rested 400. So you’ve got to use these opportunities to swim as fast as you can. Honestly, I wanted to swim a bit faster tonight, but I’ll look at the splits and see how it went.”

Titmus somewhat then backtracked on her comments, saying: “I kind of regret now saying that because now you will think I’m going to quit but I’m not” and stressed she couldn’t think beyond the current Olympic cycle.

“I’m still quite young,” she said. “But just looking in the scheme of things like in the lead-up to Paris we were saying that this could be one of my last opportunities to really swim fast.