Breaking her own world record in the 100-meter butterfly just wasn’t good enough for Gretchen Walsh on Saturday.
The American swimming star entered this week’s Tyr Pro Swim Series meet already owning the world record with her 55.18-second performance at the Olympic Trials last year. The 22-year-old began the day by cutting that number to 55.09 seconds in the morning prelims.
It was the fastest time in recorded history, and ended up not even being her fastest time of the day. A few hours later, Walsh threw down a monster 54.60 seconds to become the first woman to break the 55-second mark.
Walsh now owns the three fastest swims for an event where the previous high was Sarah Sjöström’s 55.48 seconds in the 2016 Olympics. It has been a notably fast pool in Fort Lauderdale this week, as Katie Ledecky broke her own 800-meter freestyle record earlier Saturday, the latest chapter of a highly successful meet.
Despite that dominance, Walsh fell 0.04 seconds short of gold at the 2024 Olympics, losing to fellow American Torri Huske by the closest of margins. That silver medal was Walsh’s only individual medal of the Paris Games, along with golds in the 4×100 medley and mixed medley and silver in the 4×100 freestyle.
Walsh has set personal highs in two other events this meet, breaking 53 seconds for the first time in the 100-meter freestyle on Thursday and breaking her own American record in the 50-meter butterfly on Friday.
All of that is in preparation for the national championships from June 3-7 in Indianapolis, followed by the world championships in Singapore later this summer.
