Meg Harris Wins Gold for Australia with Her Eyes Closed

Australian swimmer Meg Harris was in complete disbelief after claiming gold in the women’s 50m freestyle, all without opening her eyes.

Harris claimed her first gold of the meet on the final night in Singapore to go with silver medals in the women’s 400m medley and as part of Australia’s women’s 4x100m medley relay.

And her incredible swim on Sunday night was made all the more astonishing by the fact she did it by swimming the entire lap with her eyes shut.

Harris got off to a slow start before storming home to grab the gold in 24.02 seconds, ahead of Qingfeng Wu in 24.26, and Yujie Cheng in 24.28.

it took several seconds for the 23-year-old to truly realise she had won as Harris revealed post-race she has adopted the bizarre habit of shutting her eyes while swimming.

Harris told Cate Campbell in a post-race interview “I swim with my eyes closed, so I had no idea where I was in the race, so when I turned around it was pretty shocking”.

“I do it a lot in the 50m and in the 100m, I always do it on the second lap.”

It was a beautiful moment for Harris, who took gold in front of her mum, dad, sister and grandparents, in what was the first time her grandparents had ever flown overseas to watch her race.

Australia finished with eight gold, six silver and six bronze, only second on the medal tally to the United States, nine gold, 11 silver and nine bronze.