It is a sea change in the approach to sprint training that groundbreaking Olympic gold medallist Cameron McEvoy hopes will revolutionise the sport of swimming after his career-defining triumph in Paris.

At his fourth Olympics, and just two years after walking away burned out by a pursuit that had consumed him, the 30-year-old became the first Australian man to win the 50m freestyle.

After edging England’s Benjamin Pound and French icon Florent Manaudou at Paris La Defense Arena in a time of 21.25 seconds, McEvoy is the new sprint king of the pool.

“(I feel) just literally pure joy. It is amazing to win, but that entire 21.25 seconds was bliss,” he said moments after a career-defining triumph.

“The way the stroke moved in the water, I never thought I’d be able to experience that, the joy of the movement I just did, let alone get a gold medal with it. It is unreal.”

Having spent a lifetime chasing excellence in the pool, the solution that propelled the man known as “the professor” to the pinnacle of his sport was stumbled upon in his time away from the water.

McEvoy slashed the amount of time he spent in the pool. He travelled across Europe and let his mind roam free while turning his attention to other pursuits, which included tossing tin around in the gym, crushing callisthenics and climbing rock walls.

If he could not stand atop an Olympic podium by himself after a lifetime of trying, at least he was scaling something. An astrophysicist and mathematician in academia, McEvoy finally found his perfect equation.

It turned out that the sum of less time spent swimming, combined with a physically creative approach to training outside the pool, equalled Olympic gold for the popular Aussie.

How popular? As McEvoy was speaking, you could hear the excitement in his former teammates who were standing on the other side of the microphone. Ian Thorpe was buzzing and Giann Rooney was clearly delighted as well.

And the Aussie believes the “McEvoy method” could change the world of sprinting for good.

“Even without the medal, if I had finished fourth or eighth, I would have done so much more than what I ever thought I had left in the tank,” McEvoy said.

“With this new training approach now, I think I can help so many people around the world and push sprinting forward. This solidifies this medal. It is just unreal.”

James Magnussen, a dual-World Champion in the 100m freestyle and former Dolphins teammate of McEvoy, is in awe of the “Big Boy”.

“Most people thought Cam McEvoy was done, that he wouldn’t swim on, that he was past his best,” he said on Fox Sports’ Matty and the Missile in Paris podcast.

“He reinvents himself, goes from the 100m back to the 50m freestyle, reinvents his training regimen, gets a new coach and a new strength and conditioning (regime) and is now … completely revolutionising the style of training for the 50m freestyle.”

THE PROFESSOR GOES BACK TO THE WHITEBOARD

If the darkest hour is before dawn, the sterilised Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 were bleak for McEvoy.

Having turned 27, already three years older than the average age for a gold medal winner in the sprinting disciplines, McEvoy finished 29th in the 50m freestyle and 24th in the 100m in the midst of the pandemic.

It followed his implosion at the 2016 Olympics when, as the raging favourite in the 100m freestyle, he struggled in the final as Australia’s new whiz kid Kyle Chalmers claimed a famous gold.

The astrophysicist did not need a calculator to understand what the clock was telling him. He was done, cooked beyond good order and in need of a big break from the swimming pool, one that could well prove permanent.

He never officially retired but spent almost the entirety of 2022 as though he had put the togs in the drier for good.

A student of sport as much as he is the sciences, McEvoy delved into the methodology that drives premium performance in his new pursuits and it was not long before his mind was ticking.

The methodology used by the kings on wheels – the sprint cyclists – grabbed him. Surely there was a better way to maximise and sustain power than grinding away in the pool.

“(I considered) anything that was not swimming and the more that I dived into that and learned what they had to offer, the more I kind of related back to, ‘OK. How would that look in swimming?’,” he said.

“And I got more and more interested in it and then it got to the point where it was like, ‘OK. I have to try.’ It was almost like I was coming back to a different sport, which helped a lot.”

As a 13-year-old, McEvoy was swimming up to 70km a week in the pool. During his prior Olympic preparations, he would clock up between 20 to 40km a week.

Prior to his disastrous 2021 efforts, the elder statesman of the Dolphins shared his training routine in a profile for a sponsor in which he described himself as a “very analytical person”.

“I like to have everything analysed to the ‘nth’ degree. In swimming, it is a very complex sport to have everything analysed, let alone the best plan or best taper,” he said.

The old program he shared would break a regular swimmer and ultimately fried a freakish one like “Big Boy” McEvoy.

In his opening set, he would swim 18 swims of 400m on a five-minute regime, broken down into six freestyle legs, a split of six freestyle and backstroke, and a split of six freestyle and butterfly. And so on, as detailed below in a profile for FINIS leading into Tokyo.

THE OLD PROGRAM

SET 1

18×400 on 5 minutes as:

6 freestyle

6 freestyle/backstroke

6 freestyle/butterfly

SET 2

3 rounds–

500 swim @1:10 base

5×100 @1:10 max effort

SET 3

12×200 every 2nd max and then 40×50 backstroke best effort @:45

SET 4

8×50 all-out from a dive to build up lactic acid @2 … followed by: 36×150 – 12@1:55, 12@1:50, 12@1:45

With a broader world view away from pursing the thin black line at the bottom of the pool relentlessly, something clicked. The maths did not add up and his slower times in the pool were proof of this.

In the new program, McEvoy spends about 3km a week in the pool – Magnussen revealed he sometimes pushes that workload to 7km in the Matty and The Missile in Paris podcast – though admittedly he had a lifetime of intensive training and the honing of skills to enable this approach.

But combined with the external strength and conditioning programs, it worked and as McEvoy said in an interview with AAP in February, everything fell into place for him quickly once he returned to the pool in late 2022.

His coach Tim Lane gave him the room to experiment and McEvoy did so with the knowledge that, given his results had deteriorated under the tried-and-tested formula, he had nothing to lose through the exploration of new ground.

Within nine months he set a new Olympic and Commonwealth record when winning a gold medal in the 50m freestyle at the Fukuoka World Championships.

“For a very long time I always had questions about how we train. I didn’t agree with the majority of it, but I hadn’t spent the time to really dive into it,” he told AAP five months out from Paris 2024.

“The choice was to move on or give it a go, and if it doesn’t work, at least I have closure. The new approach has basically sparked the swimming world to move back towards what I was doing.

“Kids fall out because they’re doing four marathons a week in training and getting worse. You’re 24 in swimming and they’re handing you your pension. I was out the back door but in nine months was world champion, hitting PBs and brushing up against the world record.”

THE SWEET SCIENCE BEHIND THE SWIM

Headlines branded McEvoy’s surge for gold on Saturday morning as a splash and dash. But the level of detail needed to succeed over 50m is extreme.

The longer the distance, the more it is possible to overcome a mishap, be it a split-second stall on the blocks or a fumbled tumble into a turn. But even the most minute misstep can prove calamitous in sprint races.

After winning the World Championships in the 50m breaststroke in Doha earlier this year, Sam Williamson told foxsports.com.au the shorter distance races magnify every moment.

“You have got to be thinking on the fly and you’ve got to be really nailing those key tiny little .01, .02 second skills,” he said.

Just .05 second separated McEvoy from Proud in the end. And the split between the entire final field was only .39 seconds. The heat swim had to be flawless. So, too, the semi. And the final? Only perfection is rewarded.

He was the first off the blocks with a thunderclap, with his time of 0.56 sizzling. He then found his rhythm within four strokes and found “bliss” in the swimming pool.

“He comes out here tonight and it is one of the most high pressured events in the Olympic Games – 20 seconds of action and any mistake and it is over,” Magnussen said.

“He gets the fastest reaction time of the block, he pops up first after the breakout and he has the fastest swim speed in that final.”

Flawless. Well, almost. McEvoy is human, as shown in the past when he overcooked the 100m in Rio de Janeiro prior to overcooking himself in search of redemption in Tokyo. And he is also a perfectionist.

After watching the race for the first time during an interview with Nine, Australia’s newest golden boy said he swam perfectly for 48 metres before human nature took over.

“I’ll go straight to the analytical mind. The touch was not great. And I’ve never celebrated like that after a race,” he said later.

“I could see Ben the entire time and then under the flags, I was just hoping I could line this touch up, lean in and get my hand on the wall first.”

A DREAM ACHIEVED, MCEVOY EYES A GOLDEN FUTURE

Gold secured, the elation kicked in for an athlete who considers himself fairly laconic.

“I’m normally pretty reserved, pretty kicked back. But I was hitting the water, jumped up onto the lane rope, he told the Nine Network.

“It’s been a long road. This is my fourth Olympics. I guess the context of how different these Olympics are to what the others have been in terms of preparation and life.

“It was just elation. You touch the wall first. It is Olympic gold. It is one of the pinnacle moments you can strive for and achieve.

“There is such a big level to this, (more) than just the 21 seconds of the race and what is the presentation of that now. It goes so deep and it goes so far back and it is something I am extremely proud of.”

Having finally capitalised on his potential, McEvoy is eyeing the future with optimism, despite being past the pension age for most swimmers.

The Queenslander is aiming for the stratosphere in and out of the pool, harbouring ambitions to become an astronaut while also feeling his new found formula for success might enable him to keep Father Time at bay through until the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.

Given his success in Paris, there would be few willing to brand him a “nutty professor” for that dream.