The 37th Australian Open Water Championships titles were held in the West Australian city of Bunbury over the long weekend. This year saw the able-bodied open program expanded from five to seven events with the inaugural men’s and women’s 3km knockout.
Moesha Johnson made a clean sweep of all three individual women’s titles (3km knockout, 5km and 10km) bringing her career tally to eight open water titles, just behind Chelsea Gubecka who won nine and Mark Saliba (10). Johnson also become the first female swimmer to win three titles in the same year.
Kyle Lee successfully defended his 5km and 10km titles, the first male swimmer to achieve the double in consecutive years. He also became the first swimmer to be part of three winning mixed relay teams, having previously won as a member of North Coast’s quartet in 2023 and 2025.
Other milestones
• Sam Short won the inaugural men’s 3km knockout, his first open water title supplementing five national titles in the pool. He joins seven other swimmers to win individual open water and pool national titles. He was also the 53rd swimmer (26 men, 27 women) to win an individual title and it was the first open water title for his Rackley club.
• This was the 10th occasion and fourth year in a row the championships have been held in WA, the state having previously hosted the event on the Swan River (1993, 1995, 2004, 2014, 2015) and Champion Lakes Regatta Centre in Perth (2012), Bather’s Beach in Fremantle (2015 – two venues were used that year) and Busselton Jetty (2023, 2024, 2025)
• Moesha Johnson’s win in the 10km on the opening day was the 50th individual title by a Queensland woman.
• 164 national open water titles (78 men’s, 78 women’s, 8 mixed relay) have been contested since 1990
• Men’s and women’s 3km multi-class events were also held as standalone national titles for the first time.