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Sarah Sjostrom‘s world record in the 100 butterfly came under greater threat than ever in the finals of the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, when Canada’s Maggie MacNeil (55.59), China’s Zhang Yufei (55.64), Australia’s Emma McKeon (55.72) and the United States’ Torri Huske (55.73) all came within 0.25 seconds of Sjostrom’s 55.48 mark. Then, all throughout the Paris Olympic cycle, the question was always: “which one of these swimmers will get to Sjostrom’s world record first?”
So who would have thought, that after all these years, the person to take down Sjostrom’s record would be someone that didn’t even qualify for the Tokyo Olympics?
When Gretchen Walsh touched the wall in exactly 55.18 seconds to shatter Sjostrom’s world record, she immediately shut down most of the current discourse surrounding her name — yes, all of it, dating back to when she was 16 years old and first got on the American swimming radar. Her performance was truly one of the biggest “gotcha” moments in recent swimming history.
Prior to that moment, Walsh’s career was debated and analyzed by those who believed she could escalate to new heights, and those who thought the buzz around her name wasn’t justified.
First it was the concern that Walsh couldn’t perform at international team trials, which stemmed from her early long course struggles. After posting a promising time of 53.74 at the 2019 World Junior Championships as a 16-year-old, she failed to break 54 seconds for the next three years, missing qualification for the 2021 U.S. Olympic team and 2022 World Championships after being expected to make both teams. 2022 was also the year that Australia’s Mollie O’Callaghan became the best 100 freestyler in the world, and memories of her placing fourth to Walsh at 2019 World Juniors resurfaced. Along with that came discussions about peaking at the right time.
Once Walsh qualified for her first senior international team in 2023 and fought through her trials cobwebs, the conversation shifted toward whether she’d be capable of translating her collegiate success onto the international stage. Because of course after 2023 Worlds, Walsh went on to have one of the greatest single-season performances in NCAA swimming history. During her junior season at the University of Virginia, she broke four individual NCAA records and completely refined what was possible in women’s collegiate swimming — becoming the first to break 48 seconds in the 100 fly, the first to break 45 in the 100 free, and the first to break 20 in a 50 free relay split.
Walsh’s performance was one that, fairly enough, garnered a lot of hype surrounding what she could do in the future — just like the hype around her when she was a sixteen year old wining gold medals at World Juniors.
However, in an Olympic year, Walsh’s NCAA performances were also clouded by critics who thought she wouldn’t replicate her success in long course. There was some merit to that concern — one of Walsh’s biggest strengths in short course was her underwaters, which don’t hold the same value in the big pool. Every time she put up a time, the conversation was not able what she did, but whether she was capable of better.
So after all that, Walsh’s 100 fly felt like a statement, one that proved that she was capable of the best-case scenario to her career. After enduring five years of both hype-fueled future projections and “bathtub pool swimmer” jeers from the crowd, she showed that she was worth all the hype and more.
Surely enough, there will be more discourse tied to Walsh’s name in the future, and more expectations about her performance. But for now, let’s put things in perspective: she’s the fastest woman in history, and took down the world record of one of the greatest female sprinters ever. That’s remarkable enough.
Walsh still has to qualify for the Olympics in finals Sunday night, and after that, she’ll be expected to replicate a similar top performance in Paris. Regardless of what happens next though, she’s shown us what she can do after all those years, and that’s becoming the fastest in history.
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Column: Gretchen Walsh Proved She Was Worth All The Hype