Cam McEvoy, Kyle Chalmers and Ben Armbruster eye 50m butterfly clean sweep

Australia is eyeing a clean sweep in the men’s 50m butterfly final in Glasgow in an intriguing battle between traditional and unconventional methods.

Australian pair Kyle Chalmers and Cameron McEvoy are two freestyle kings preparing for a swim-off in their lesser-known discipline, just before 3am WST on Thursday morning.

Olympic 100m freestyle gold medallist Chalmers is old school, preparing for swimming’s majors with long hours and high kilometres in the pool.

McEvoy, the 50m freestyle champion and world record holder, has turned world swimming on its head with an alternative route: low-volume, high-intensity training inspired by track and field sprinting and powerlifting.

Under the “McEvoy Method”, which he employed after a disappointing Tokyo Olympics, he has slashed his pool time from roughly 30km a week down to a maximum of 2km, focusing on a combination of gym work, calisthenics and rock climbing.

The proof was in the 20.88sec world record he set in China in March, breaking César Cielo’s super-suit era time of 20.91 seconds, which had stood for more than 16 years.

It won him a gold medal at the Paris Olympics and the 50m freestyle earlier this week in Glasgow when he dipped under 21 seconds for only the second time to win his first individual title at his third Commonwealth Games.

But the fly is a different beast again and there is a third Australian contender, the beautifully and appropriately named Ben Armbruster.

The 24-year-old out-touched fellow Queensland McEvoy and South Australian Chalmers in a helter-skelter 50m butterfly final in the last men’s event of the six-day Australian selection trials in June.

A student-athlete at Bond University, he’d previously only won an international relay medal – gold as part of the 4 x 100m mixed freestyle at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

He beat the pair with one last giant stroke in a 0.10sec personal best time of 22.90sec. McEvoy was 0.02 of a second behind while Chalmers was third in 22.97.

It was the biggest upset of the trials and sets up the trio of Australian possibilities.

“I’m over the moon, I’m just relieved, pretty stoked,” Armbruster said after the win.

The stiffest competition from other Commonwealth swimmers will come from Canada’s Josh Liendo, who has already defended his 100m Commonwealth Games butterfly crown, holding off Australia’s Matt Temple and Armbruster in the final.

Singapore’s Teong Tzen Wei is the returning Commonwealth silver medallist with a personal best of 23.03.

WA’s Glasgow 100m backstroke gold medallist Iona Anderson is also expected to feature in the women’s 4 x 100m medley finals in the early hours of Thursday morning.

Earlier, on Wednesday night, at 6.10pm WST, the opening heat of the men’s mile returns to the Commonwealth Games for the first time since Jamaica in 1966.

Australian pair, 20-year-old wunderkind Cameron Myers and defending champion Oliver Hoare, will take on the newly minted world record holder, Scotland’s Josh Kerr, and Kenya’s Timothy Cheruiyot.

Home-town favourite Kerr set the record of 3min42.665sec in front of 60,000 fans at the recent London Diamond League meet.