Tick, tick … boom: how ‘goofy girl’ Ariarne Titmus became an Olympic great

Ariarne Titmus likes to think she is ordinary. “I just look at myself and I’m so normal,” she said on Saturday night, mere moments after winning the marquee race of the Paris Olympics swim meet. Or moments after that: “I hope no-one looks at me any differently – I’m just the same old goofy Tassie girl, out here living out her dream.”

Only Titmus is not ordinary. Far from it. She is extraordinary.

Related: Ariarne Titmus sees off McIntosh and Ledecky on golden night in the pool for Australia

It is testament to the 23-year-old’s brilliance that she makes the exceptional seem mundane. At La Défense Arena, the women’s 400m freestyle had been billed as a blockbuster. Titmus versus American swim queen Katie Ledecky versus Canadian prodigy Summer McIntosh (not to mention a talented rest of the field).

Take a look at the world record progression and this hype made sense. Ledecky owned the world record from 2014 to 2022. Titmus took it off her at the Australian championships two years ago. Then it was McIntosh’s turn, at the Canadian trials last year. Yet only months later Titmus took it back.

The last time the three met, at the 2023 world championships, Titmus regained the world record, with panache, going below 3 minutes and 56 seconds for the first-time in history and beating her nearest rival by over three seconds.

On Saturday, the race was less thrilling. It was almost dull in how carefully and precisely Titmus controlled proceedings. That made it no less extraordinary; if anything, it made it all the more spectacular.

Titmus led at every turn. Like a metronome, she went back and forth along the 50m pool. Tick tock, tick tock. After the first turn, there was never more than a second between her splits: a high of 30.44 in the penultimate lap, a low of 29.61 in the second lap. Tick tock, tick tock.

It almost looked easy, like Titmus was racing in second gear. Her aura of invincibility masked a spirited challenge from McIntosh, who at 17 is already one of the world’s best swimmers. It certainly did not feel easy. “Buggered,” Titmus admitted when later asked how she felt. But such is the Tasmanian’s talent, such is her extraordinary ability, that a win never seemed in doubt as she led from first touch to last.

Of the many remarkable statistics about Titmus’s dominance of middle-distance freestyle since she blossomed in the late 2010s, the most remarkable is this: following the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in August 2018, when a teenage Titmus finished second to Ledecky, the Australian has not lost a 400m international race.

Truly extraordinary dominance – against some of the best swimmers in the world.

Nor is she finished in Paris. On Sunday morning, barely 14 hours after her 400m triumph, Titmus will be back in the pool for her 200m freestyle heat. She is expected to progress through to the semi-finals on Sunday night, and then the finals on Monday evening. Titmus is the reigning Olympic champion; her team-mate Mollie O’Callaghan is the reigning world champion. Titmus narrowly beat home O’Callaghan at trials, setting a new world record in the process. Their Paris match-up will be another clash for the ages.

Then on Thursday, Titmus will be a key member of the Australian women’s 4x200m relay squad; the Dolphins won last year’s world title in a record-breaking time. And on Saturday, Titmus will back up for the women’s 800m freestyle. That race has long been owned by Ledecky, who has won gold at the last three Olympics. The American remains the favourite, but there is every possibility that an in-form Titmus could dethrone her. In other words, with one race down, the swimmer remains in contention to win two, three or even four gold medals in Paris.

Related: Australian great Emma McKeon sets sights on crowning glory at Paris Games | Kieran Pender

Titmus may like to think she is ordinary. But her path to greatness shows otherwise. When Titmus was young, swimming laps in the Launceston pool, her father Steve drove her to training each morning. It required a 4.30am start for both of them. They had a deal: Titmus would set an alarm and then wake her father – if she slept through the alarm, she would miss training. “It was my fault if I missed, and I never missed,” Titmus later recalled. “Not once in my entire swimming career.”

Such remarkable commitment helped Titmus navigate the challenges of relocating from Tasmania to Brisbane at 14 to pursue her swimming career. It helped Titmus close a seemingly insurmountable gap between her best time and Ledecky’s – 16 seconds when the young Australian first came under the wing of coach Dean Boxall. It helped Titmus win her first world title in 2019, drove her to a first Olympic crown two years later, and came to the fore as she defended it.

On Saturday night, revelling in her apparent ordinariness, Titmus said that she hoped her success – a girl “from little old Lonnie [Launceston]” – would inspire others. “I hope it goes to show that anyone can do what they want to do if they work hard and believe in themselves.”

There may be a lesson here for all of us. But not all of us are Ariarne Titmus. Australia’s middle-distance freestyle superstar makes the extraordinary seem ordinary. And there is nothing ordinary about that.