Swimming: World champion Magnussen to keep rivals guessing

James Magnussen of Australia celebrates the gold medal in the Men's 100m Freestyle Final. Photo / Getty Images

Swimming world champion James Magnussen plans to keep his international rivals guessing as much as possible by not racing abroad until the London Olympics.

Magnussen, 20, has emerged as the man the sprint world has to catch after his stunning showing at July's world championships which included gold medals in the 100m freestyle and 4x100m freestyle relay.

The Port Macquarie swimmer was a virtual unknown before the meet and revealed on Thursday he is hoping to preserve at least some of that "shock factor" by confining his racing to Australia in the next eight months.

"I guess one of the biggest weapons I had at the world championships was the fact that nobody knew who I was," Magnussen said.

"... I'm sure there's a lot of race footage out there now that other coaches are studying and trying to teach their swimmers how to race me but you really need to race somebody and be next to them to get a feel for how they swim and how you can overcome them.

"The more I can stay back here in Australia and keep to myself and keep behind closed doors and train hard, the more I'll benefit.

"At this stage I don't think I will be (racing overseas).

"We may head overseas and do a little bit of training but the way our squad is at the moment I've got all the competition I need within our own squad."

Magnussen's 100m swim of 47.49 seconds in Shanghai remains well ahead of of his rivals' best post-supersuit times including Brazilian Cesar Cielo (47.84), Canadian Brent Hayden (47.95), France's William Meynard (48.00) and American Nathan Adrian (48.05).

The NSW mid-north coast swimmer will compete at next month's Queensland titles (Dec 10-16) as well as the South Australian (Jan 27-29) and NSW titles (Feb 10-12) as he builds towards Olympic trials in Adelaide in March.

He will join the rest of Australia's top sprinters for a relay camp in Sydney on Friday.

- AAP