Miami’s Max Giuliani has produced two of the breakthrough swims of the meet in the Australian A team’s outstanding showing at the TYR Pro Championships in Irvine, California (USA).
The gold dust on Australia’s record medal haul hadn’t even settled at the World Championships in Fukuoka when the 20-year-old former Tasmanian, also blasted his way into contention for 2024.
The Tasmanian born and bred Giuliani, now training on Queensland’s Gold Coast, served up some timely breakthroughs – winning the 100/200m freestyle double in stunning personal best times as well as stand-it times in the freestyle relays.
Giuliani won the 200m freestyle final in 1:46.23 after serving up a 1:46.63 in the preliminaries which had followed a personal best leadoff of 1:46.26 in the winning Australia A 4x200m freestyle relay.
The emerging Giuliani then produced a 48.21 to win the 100m on the final day, again lowering his pb of 48.63, set in the morning – making him the 11th fastest all-time Australian.
Giuliani followed coach Paul Croswell from The Hobart Aquatic Centre who joined the expanding Rackley coaching team at Miami last year and is now under the guidance of Miami Head Coach Richard Scarce.
He was certainly one of several the stand-out Queensland performers - with his 200m time of 1:46.23 fast enough to have won the Australian Trials – a 200m final that saw Giuliani placed eighth in 1:48.05 – making almost a two-second improvement.
Not content, Giuliani then churned out another pair of pbs, winning the 100m final in 48.21 (after his prelims time of 48.63) – a time that would have placed him third behind Kyle Chalmers, who went on to win the World title and another young gun, Flynn Southam.
Giuliani mixed it with some serious US swimmers, Grant House (1:46.73), Brooks Curry(1:46.81) and Luca Urlando (1:46.99) in the 200m and Curry (48.36), Jonathan Kulow (48.61) and the USA’s triple Olympic relay gold medallist from Rio and Tokyo, Blake Pieroni(48.70) in the 100m.
With those times Giuliani will be a serious contender for 2024 in Australia’s 4x100 and 4x200m freestyle relay push to Paris – gold and bronze medallists respectively in the recently concluded World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka.
Giuliani’s times would also have placed him in the top 16 in Fukuoka in both the 100 and 200m semi-finals and very much a contender for the 200m final.
Meanwhile, 18-year-old Jesse Coleman (Bond Swimming; Chris Mooney) also stood out, clicking a personal best 51.66 to finish second in the 100m butterfly final – the equal seventh fastest time by an Australian before splitting 52.08 in Australia’s winning 4x100m medley relay featuring backstroker Ty Hartwell (Rackley; Damien Jones) 55.14 and Jezze Gorman(St Andrews; Ashley Delaney) 49.26 in the freestyle leg.
The Queensland contingent also tasted success in the men’s 50m freestyle with Commonwealth Games representative Thomas Nowakowski (Somerset; Ashley Callus) winning the 50 metres freestyle in a personal best time of 21.81.
Giuliani (48.76) and Nowakowski (49.77 lead off) also combined with Jezze Gorman 49.35 and Jamie Jack (St Peters Western; Dean Boxall) also 49.35 to win the 4x100m freestyle relay with Giuliani and Thomas Hauck (All Saints; Ken Sabotic) 1:48.49 in the Australia A team that won the 4x200m freestyle relay.
In other events:
Lily Price (Rackley; Damien Jones) SILVER, 100m butterfly, 57.86.
Ella Ramsay (Chandler; Vince Raleigh) GOLD 200IM 2:11.07 and GOLD 200m breaststroke 2:27.41
Mikayla Smith (Griffith University; Michael Bohl) GOLD 100m breaststroke 1:08.02; SILVER 200m breaststroke 2:27.63.
Ty Hartwell SILVER 200m backstroke 1:58.05
Hannah Fredericks (St Peters Western; Dean Boxall) SILVER 200m backstroke 2:09.87, while;
Mia O’Leary (Bond Swimming; Chris Mooney) 55.68; Alex Perkins (USC Spartans; Mick Palfrey) 54.74 and Lily Price 55.67 were all part of the winning Australian 4x100m freestyle relay.
