Zac Stubblety-Cook breaks world 200m breaststroke record at Australian swimming championships

Zac Stubblety-Cook is struggling to grasp the the fact that he has become Australian swimming’s latest world record-holder.

Stubblety-Cook had a simple goal in Thursday night’s final of the 200m breaststroke at the Australian championships in Adelaide: swim fast.

But faster than anyone in the event’s history?

“It’s a lot to wrap your head around,” Stubblety-Cook said. “It’s a bit surreal, to be perfectly honest. “I was obviously hoping to swim fast and hoping to swim close to my best. But that is just something else.”

He clocked two minutes 05.95 seconds, bettering the previous benchmark of 2:06.12 set by the Russian Anton Chupkov in 2019.

The quietly spoken 23-year-old is arguably Australia’s lowest-profile Olympic swimming champion.

Stubblety-Cook’s 200m breaststroke triumph at last year’s Tokyo Olympics was overshadowed by the multiple gold medal-winning feats of the likes of Emma McKeon and Kaylee McKeown.

The Brisbane-born athlete, who cites being curious, driven and stubborn as his top-three character traits, had pondered breaking the world record in his pet event. But it wasn’t a burning motivation.

“I had thought about it ... but I never have been like, ‘Yes, that’s it, I want to break the world record,’” Stubblety-Cook said. “It happened obviously … but I didn’t think we were going that fast.”

His benchmark came on a night when Kyle Chalmers signalled a backflip which will deny the pop star Cody Simpson an international swimming debut at the looming world titles.

Chalmers had announced he would not swim at next month’s event in Budapest. But after winning the 50m butterfly and finishing second in the 100m butterfly in Adelaide, he is poised to reverse that decision. His likely change of mind will prevent Simpson