Fukuoka: When Sam Short held on to win the men’s 400m freestyle final at the world swimming championships on Sunday, in a time of three minutes 40.68 seconds, he came within six tenths of a second of breaking Ian Thorpe’s Australian record that has stood for 21 years.

For many Australians who only care about swimming once every four years at the Olympics, there would have been plenty of Google searches to learn a bit more about this relatively unknown 19-year-old from the Sunshine Coast.

Short is toughness personified and will be one of Australia’s best gold medal chances by the time the Paris Olympics begin in July next year. He races in the 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle events.

Need an example of why he’s so tenacious? Take this from Short’s coach, Damien Jones, after a particularly lung-busting and brutal training block.

“Everything I threw at him, he just ate it up. He’d look at me and smile, as if to say, is that all you’ve got?” Jones said. “So the next block of training, it’s another level up. Same thing. There’s nothing that I’ve thrown at him that he hasn’t been able to succeed at. He will never let me win.”

Asked whether Short has it in him to break Paul Biedermann’s long-standing 400m freestyle world record of 3:40.07, which is one hundredth of a second faster than Thorpe’s mark, Jones interjects before the question has even finished.

“100 per cent,” Jones said. “He’s only 19. I think he can improve 0.1 or 0.2 [seconds] every turn.

“Our expectation was he was going to get 3:41. [To swim] 3:40, that’s another level. There’s no limitation on this kid. I’m not ever going to put a ceiling or a capacity on what I think I can hit. We’re just letting him go and just enjoying the ride.”