Seven Bronze for WA Swimming Duo
Recent WAIS scholarship recipients Brianna Throssell and Nicholas Brown have won a combined seven medals for Australia at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China.
Throssell has secured four bronze medals in China, whilst Brown has been part of three bronze medal winning swims. The duo accepted WAIS scholarships at the most recent round of selections in June.
The pair earned their first success swimming together as members of Australia’s mixed 4x100m freestyle relay team, competing along with Ami Matsuo and Kyle Chalmers (and Nic Groenewald in heat)
On day two of competition, Throssell backed up for a further two bronze medals, taking third place in the women’s 200m butterfly and as a member of the women’s medley relay.
Taking it easy in the first two laps of the 200m butterfly, the 18-year-old from City Beach mowed down her competition to touch the wall third behind Hungary’s Liliana Szilagyi and China’s Yufei Zhang.
“Everyone goes out quite fast and my strength is the back end and I just need to know to work my strength and not get caught up in everyone else and how they swim their race.”
Clocking a time of 2:09.65, she swam three seconds clear of her heat performance and 0.2 faster than her best which was another win for the young athlete.
“I’m pretty stoked at the moment, a bronze medal and a PB I couldn’t be happier right now,” she said.
Taking to the pool again in the last race of the evening, Throssell formed part of the bronze medal winning women’s 4×100 medley team with Amy Forrester (Queensland), Ella Bond (South Australia) and Ami Matsuo (New South Wales).
The Aussie girls smashed their qualifying time of 4:11.22 with a time of 4:06.36 behind the home nation, China, and Great Britain.
Over the moon with her whirlwind first few days as a Youth Olympian, Throssell said it was a dream come true.
“It’s such an honour,” the City of Perth swimmer said.
“It has been such an experience. I’ve never done anything like this. I think we all have kind of learnt to become professional athletes, think for ourselves, not relying on other people or anything or for people to do things for us. We sort of manage ourselves quite individually.”
Brown picked up his second bronze of the Youth Olympic Games after smashing his PB with a time of 53.18 in the men’s 100m butterfly.
“This whole experience has taught me to believe in myself, I never thought I could do this a few months ago,” The Western Australian said.
“I only made my first national finals last year in the fly and to come home with a bronze medal at the Youth Olympics I mean it’s incredible I can’t explain it.”
Despite being edged out by Zhuhao Li from China and Aleksandr Sadovnikov from Russia, the 18-year-old said he did what he set out to do.
“I had a set race plan going into the race not to waste too much energy on that first 50 and just to try and kick home from the turn and I think I did that pretty well I mean it’s a PB for me by 0.9 or something so I mean I’m stoked,” he said.
“It is always a great pleasure to put on the Australian tracksuit , I remember the first time I put my Australian gear on for the first time it’s just all the emotions going through that is just amazing and to compete for Australia it is just a dream come true.”
Throssell earned herself a fourth bronze medal in the women’s 200m freestyle on day four, having early narrowly missing a medal in the women’s 50m butterfly when touched the wall just 0.02 seconds behind bronze medallist Nastja Govejsek from Slovenia.
Throssell said she put the disappointment behind her and just gave it her all in the 200m free.
“To be honest I was a little bit disappointed but I just had to kind of put that aside and just refocus myself in the 200 free and I gave it all I had and came away with a bronze and a PB so I couldn’t be happier,” the Western Australian said.
“Apparently bronze is my favourite colour at the moment, it would be nice to get a different colour at some point but I’m happy with bronze,” the 18-year-old said.
“I feel excited, I’ve kind of never really performed like this at an international meet before so I’m over the moon at how it’s gone so far.”
In the men’s 4x100m medley event, the Aussie’s kept a steady pace, coming in fourth at every split before Chalmers,16, powered home in freestyle clocking a time of 49.09 to come third and secure Australia another medal.
The medal is another feather in Brown’s cap, a third for the games, a second for Chalmers and Groenewald and a first for Bell.
Heading into the race the boys aimed to strip five seconds from the heat swim, but they did one better clocking a time of 3:40.68, eight seconds quicker than this morning.
“This competition has been one of the toughest I have ever swum against, the amount of talent that is in this pool is unbelievable and just being part of this meet is an amazing experience,” Brown said.
-AOC