The 1999 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships were held in August at Sydney Olympic Park, and were viewed as a rehearsal for the 2000 Summer Olympics to be held in the same venue. With Thorpe expected to deliver world records at his first international meet in Sydney, the event was shown live on Australian television for the first time. The opening night saw him pitted against Hackett and South Africa's Ryk Neethling in the 400 m freestyle final. The trio reached the 200 m mark in a group, on world record pace, before Thorpe broke away, recording a split time 1.86 s ahead of world-record pace at 300 m. He extended his lead to four body lengths by the 350 m mark and finished in a time of 3 min 41.83 s, cutting almost two seconds from the world record, and covering the second half in almost the same time as the first. Talbot reacted to the performance by dubbing Thorpe as "the greatest swimmer we've ever had", whilst four-time American Olympic gold medalist Rowdy Gaines, commentating for NBC, said "...he went into a balls-out sprint at 250 – and I have never seen anything like that...I have been around swimming a long time and it's the most amazing swim I've ever seen, hands down." A formula used by the International Swimming Statisticians Association to compare world records in different events gave his performance the highest score of all current world records. Thorpe promptly donated the A$25,000 prize money for breaking the first world record in the pool to charity.