Sienna Toohey stopped the clock at 1:05.97. In that instant the 100m breaststroke had a new benchmark, and Australian swimming a new name. Sienna Toohey, seventeen and still at school, had gone under 1:06 for the first time and erased a record that had stood, untouched, since before she was born.
The mark she took belonged to Leisel Jones. She posted a 1:06.37 at the same age at the 2003 World Championships in Barcelona, a world record at the time. For seventeen years it held. Toohey took it down on the second night of the Australian Trials, in the meet's opening final.
How it was won
The race was settled early. Toohey went out in 30.58 over the first fifty, quicker than Jones had managed and quicker than her own former best, and that was the swim. The lead was too large to chase. She brought it home in 35.39 for the 1:05.97. Ella Ramsay followed her in for second in 1:06.70, a personal best of her own, but the night belonged to the teenager in front. The look on her face said as much. Mouth open, eyes wide, she seemed unable to believe the time herself.
The number placed her third on the all-time Australian list, behind only Jones at 1:05.09 and Sarah Katsoulis at 1:05.86. It also lifted her past Chelsea Hodges as the fastest Australian woman of the post-supersuit era. The performance carried her onto two teams at once: the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in July, and the Pan Pacific Championships in the United States in August.
The road to the record
The result did not arrive from nowhere. In April, at the Australian Age Championships, Toohey had swum 1:06.43, already within touching distance of Jones's age record. The gap that remained was small; closing it was another matter. The Albury swimmer has since moved to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, a step that has cost her the comforts of home.
"It's hard not seeing my friends for quite some time. I don't have a lot of friends in Canberra, but that just made it all worth it," she told host broadcaster Channel Nine.
Australia has waited for a breaststroker of this order. The country had not produced an Olympic or World Championship finalist in the event since 2019. Toohey's time would have reached the final in Paris and again in Singapore. On this season's world list she sits inside the top five, and first among the nations she will race this year.
Seventeen years ago the record was set by a great. Now it belongs to a schoolgirl who has only begun.
