It is rare to find such a decorated athlete – one with a regal moniker, no less – who still thrives on being the underdog. Australia’s Kyle Chalmers, “King Kyle”, has won just about everything there is to win in international swimming. Yet year after year he returns, somehow still the underdog, somehow ready to spring another upset.
In recent days, at the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, it has been more of the same. On Sunday, Chalmers anchored Australia’s relay team to an unexpected gold in the men’s 4×100m freestyle relay. On Thursday, he will go again in the individual event – the two-lap freestyle blitz, another opportunity for Chalmers to reign supreme. Arise, King Kyle, once more?
The modern Chalmers story began nearly a decade ago, at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. Just 18, the boy from Port Lincoln qualified for the Games at trials alongside more-fancied compatriot Cameron McEvoy. Chalmers had pedigree – he had won three gold medals at the junior world championships a year before – but this was the blue riband event of the Olympic swim meet, with a stacked field.
No one gave Chalmers a chance. And yet he shocked teammate McEvoy and the swimming world to touch first in a remarkable upset, the youngest male swimmer to win an individual gold since Ian Thorpe in 2000. In less than 48 seconds, an international swim star was born.
The nine years that followed have been glittering. Chalmers has won seven Commonwealth Games gold medals, six world titles and eight more Olympic medals. Now 27, Chalmers has established himself as a mainstay of the Australian Dolphins, the leading light of the squad’s male contingent.
But somehow, Chalmers has always positioned himself as the underdog.
In part it is because of the injuries that have plagued his career. From bulged discs to a degenerative spine, from shoulder problems to heart surgery, there has been a lengthy list of ailments. Chalmers has endured endless cortisone injections and plasma therapy; at one point he even hurt himself while lying on a couch (after a stint working as a landscaper, he said his body was not used to the rest). “And that’s just the physical side of things,” he said in Tokyo, acknowledging the mental challenges that come with such exertions.
It may, in part, be explained by Chalmers always doing things his own way – contemplating swapping swimming for a career in the AFL, or working part-time as a tradie for much of his career.
Certainly, in part it is his mentality. Chalmers thrives with his back against the wall, the doubt of others seems to fuel him. At the Tokyo Olympics, this reporter made a joking reference that the women had been carrying the Dolphins to glory – was it now the men’s turn? To Chalmers, it was no joke.
On Sunday, at the latest edition of the world titles, the Australian men’s freestyle relay team were not expected to win gold. The Dolphins had won the event just once over the past decade; the Americans have been ascendant, winning the past three Olympic golds.
But Chalmers always lifts for relays – it is no surprise a majority of his world and Olympic medals have been in team disciplines. It has so often been the scene of his heroic feats. And so again it was on Sunday; the Australians were third at the final changeover, before Chalmers powered home with a fearsome 46.53 split to finish over the top of the American rivals.
King Kyle once more. But after the win, the underdog mentality was again on display. “I think it’s a huge upset, and we prove that time and time again,” Chalmers said. “Every year you read the articles and people write us off. We have a point to prove and swim with a chip on our shoulder a little bit, to be honest with you.”
How many six-time world champions, nine-time Olympic medallists swim with a chip on their shoulder?
On Thursday, Chalmers will contest the final in his pet 100m freestyle event, after qualifying through the heats and semi-final on Wednesday. It is shaping up to be a blockbuster clash. Chalmers won gold at the last major world championships, two years ago in Japan, but the Australian was blown away by young Chinese rival Pan Zhanle at the Paris Olympics, who shaved almost half a second off his own world record.
In Singapore, Chalmers will go head to head with Romanian prodigy David Popovici and America’s Jack Alexy, who qualified fastest. Popovic is just 20; Alexy is 22. Despite only being 27, Chalmers is the field’s elder statesman, contesting his fifth world championships. Pan, another member of the next generation at 20, is a surprise absence from the final, after a lacklustre semi-final showing.
Despite Chalmers’ glittering career, he has only once been world champion in the individual 100m freestyle – in 2023 – and once at the Olympic level, back in 2016 (silver in Paris behind Pan followed a heartbreaking silver in Tokyo, six one-hundredths of a second from victory).
Will this be the moment King Kyle reasserts his dominance over a field of princeling upstarts? Could Olympic gold follow in Los Angeles in three years’ time? Chalmers has even floated the possibility of swimming on to Brisbane 2032, particularly following the addition of the 50m butterfly to the Olympic programme.
He may not be the favourite on Thursday night. But that has never stopped Kyle Chalmers before.
