2024 Olympic Preview: Sarah Sjostrom Is Racing for Her Legacy in the Women’s 50 Free

2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES

• Pool Swimming: July 27 – August 4, 2024
  • Open Water Swimming: August 8 – 9, 2024
• La Défense Arena — Paris, France
• LCM (50 meters)
• Meet Central
• Full Schedule
• SwimSwam Preview Index

BY THE NUMBERS — Women’s FREESTYLE

• • World Record: 23.61 — Sarah Sjostrom, Sweden (2023)
  • World Junior Record: 24.17 — Claire Curzan, USA (2021)
  • Olympic Record: 23.81 — Emma McKeon, Australia (2021)
  • 2020 Olympic Champion: Emma McKeon, Australia – 23.81

The more things seem to change, the more they stay the same.

With three of the top four finishers from the last Olympic Games, and five of the eight finalists, not returning, it would seem like this women’s 50 free could be a wide-open race.

But in the twilight of her career, having ceded the 100 fly that made her famous, 30-year-old Swede Sarah Sjostrom has distanced herself from the field in this women’s 50 free, swimming 23.61 and 23.62, respectively, in the semifinals and finals of the 50 free at last year’s World Championships, followed by a 23.69 at this year’s World Championships.

She now owns the 5 fastest performances in history, and the 27 fastest performances by anybody who will swim the race at this summer’s Olympic Games.

That is because Emma McKeon, the defending champion and Olympic Record holder, didn’t qualify at Australia’s Trials, while Americans Kate Douglass, who was 23.91 for silver at February’s World Championships, has chosen to focus on the overlapping 200 IM instead.

So it seems like Sjostrom heads into the meet as an overwhelming favorite. A gold medal here would do a lot to enhance the legacy of a swimmer who has a strong claim as the best female swimmer of all time, with the exception of only having a single Olympic gold medal. In Tokyo, though, she still managed to take silver in this 50 free in spite of breaking her elbow in a slip-and-fall earlier in the year.

Seemingly as healthy as she’s been in a while, and taking this event to new heights consistently, it would be easy to call her untouchable, but there’s one swimmer that gives me pause from adding that moniker.

Gretchen Walsh‘s Long Meet

Gretchen Walsh (photo: Jack Spitser)

American Gretchen Walsh, 21, got a big monkey off her back by showing up and swimming as the star of the US Olympic Trials. She kicked the meet off with a bang in the 100 fly, setting a new World Record, and went on to finish 3rd in the 100 free and win the 50 free in 24.06.

We know Walsh has a huge ceiling, and she now has the confidence of knowing that she has done it at a big meet.

This is not to say that she’s in the same realm as Sjostrom; it’s more akin to ‘if there is an active swimmer who I believe has the talent to get to the 23.6/23.7 range in her career,’ it’s Walsh (and probably Douglass, but she’s not racing).

The issue is that Walsh has a big schedule at this meet. At least two, but maybe three, relays; two individual events; big races to start the meet and big races to end the meet. 9 days is a long time to stay ‘up,’ and Sjostrom has relatively-fewer events, maybe two relays and the 50 free individually.

Sjostrom is likely to head into this 50 free with maybe one or two races under her belt, plus the overlapping medley relay (afterward). Walsh is likely to head into this race with five high-intensity races under her belt, with the overlapping medley relay (afterward). The good news is that her coach is Todd DeSorbo, the Olympic Team head coach, and so is likely to protect her from, say, prelims of the women’s 400 free relay.

I just still don’t see her coming through and being able to catch up to Sjostrom after that long meet.

But That Doesn’t Make Her My Pick for Silver

WASICK-Katarzyna
World Aquatics Championships – Doha 2024
02 – 18 Feb 2024
credit Fabio Cetti

Polish swimmer Kasia Wasick, who trains at SMU in Dallas in the United States, is another veteran who has continued to improve in this 50 free late in her career.

Wasick, who turned 32 in March, continues to inch forward in this 50 free. After getting hung on 24.1 for a few years, she broke through to 23.95 at this year’s World Championships in Doha, taking a bronze medal in the final.

Her ceiling doesn’t feel as high as Sjostrom and Walsh, but she feels like the most-reliable pick for silver, as her consistency has been very good. She swam 24.2 at the Pro Swim in San Antonio in April, for example, and was 24.2 again in mid-May.

Sub-24 For a Medal?

JACK-Shayna
World Aquatics Championships – Doha 2024
02 – 18 Feb 2024
credit Fabio Cetti

If we project that it’s going to take a 23-something for a medal, there are only a few other swimmers in this field who feel like they have that kind of potential.

Besides the aforementioned, the obvious is Shayna Jack. With a 24-month doping suspension behind her, Jack has returned to the trajectory where she was prior to that incident and is one of four sub-24s so far globally this season.

Among the top 10 in the world this season, many will be absent, including Cate Campbell of Australia and Torri Huske of the US, who both missed top two finishes at their national Trials meets.

American Simone Manuel, after a battle with Overtraining Syndrome, is back and looks almost as good as ever. If she’s given a window, she’ll get her fingers on the wall – it’s sort of her specialty, winning touches. She did it in 2016 at the Olympics, she did it at Trials this year.

I don’t think Sjostrom will give Manuel the opportunity to touch for gold, but the rest of the field is within reach for her. It would be an incredible next paragraph for her story if she wound up on an Olympic podium in Paris.

Then there’s the 21-year old Chinese swimmer Wu Qingfeng, who was 5th in Tokyo as a teenager. She has had a few lull years since then, not racing at the 2022 World Championships, and racing only relays at the 2023 World Championships and 2023 Asian Games.

At Chinese Nationals in April, though, she swam 24.22 to become the third-best Chinese woman in history. Wu was not one of the 23 swimmers who tested positive for a banned substance in the run-up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, though her countrymate Zhang Yufei, who was 2nd at Chinese Trials, was.

I see this as a seven swimmer race for the medals.

Fighting for Finals

In a race that is generally hyper-competitive, because of swimmers probably making other event choices Siobhan Haughey and swimmers who were outside of their countries’ top two (Cate Campbell and Bronte Campbell, Torri Huske, Abbey Weitzeil), the 50 free doesn’t wind up being a super-deep event at the Olympics.

Top 20 Swimmers in the World This Season Who Are Probably not swimming at Worlds:

• #2 – Kate Douglass, USA
• #6 – Torri Huske, USA
• #7 – Cate Campbell, Australia
• #10 – Abbey Weitzeil, USA
• #13 – Siobhan Haughey, Hong Kong (expected)
• #14 – Emma McKeon, Australia
• #15 – Arina Surkova, Russia
• #16 – Bronte Campbell, Australia
• #17 – Olivia Wunsch, Australia
• #18 – Mollie O’Callaghan, Australia
• #19 – Taylor Ruck, Canada (expected)

Plus no Marrit Steenbergen, who was in the final at last year’s World Championships.

While there is still plenty of quality at the top of this field, that means there are precious-few swimmers who are more than a surprising drop from getting into the fray.

Meg Harris, 22, is having a good year and has progressed nicely into these Olympics. She swam a best time of 24.26 to finish 2nd at the Australian Olympic Trials in June. In May 2023, she swam 24.29. In July 2022, she swam 24.32. She seems to shave a few hundredths off ever year, but the drops aren’t coming in big chunks yet.

Michelle Coleman, 30, is Sjostrom’s countrymate, and while she hasn’t been a best time since 2019, she continues to find a way into finals at meets like the World Championships and the Olympics. She was 7th at Worlds last year, and her 24.48 from the Mare Nostrum in early June is already close to the 24.43 she swam there.

The French pair are both building nicely into their home Olympics. This is one of the few events where there was a real battle for Olympic spots at French Nationals, and Beryl Gastaldello, 29, came out on top with a personal best of 24.51. Melanie Henique, 31, was 2nd in 24.53.

The adrenaline will be pumping in front of a home crowd, so it wouldn’t be hard to see either of them pop off something big in the semi-finals and find their way into a final, perhaps using their best swim a round too early.

The most intriguing of this group is Britain’s Anna Hopkin. The 28-year-old is hitting that age where we’ve seen some of these sprinters find new life. Her best time of 24.34 was done at the 2019 World Championships, and while she hasn’t been better than 24.5 since, she has been close to her best time several times – including 24.51s in both April 2023 and early 2024. It continues to nag me that we never truly saw her best in long course, though at only 1.65m (about 5’5″), she did go far in long course, where most shorter swimmers peak in the short course pool.

SwimSwam’s Picks

What’s most interesting about picking this race is that almost all of the contenders are doing their best swimming right now. While anything can happen in the 50 free, there isn’t a big presence of a swimmer past their prime trying to hold on for a medal. There are young swimmers, veteran swimmers, swimmers in mid-career – and those contenders, for the most part, are recently racing top times.

Darkhorse: Sarah Curtis, Italy – The 17-year-old has swum the five fastest times of her career in 2024, including a 24.56 at the Italian Championships in March. She’s kind of the one swimmer in this 24.5-or-better range who is having what I like to call “age grouper drops,” where every start is a potential best time, and Curtis is also the only one who is still, actually, a junior-aged swimmer. Italy as a nation performed very well at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. If someone is going to pop something off and earn a come-from-nowhere final, it feels like Curtis is primed for that.