2024 SHORT COURSE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
- December 10-15, 2024
- Duna Arena, Budapest, Hungary
- SCM (25m)
- Meet Central
- Roster Index
- SwimSwam Preview Index
- Pick’em
- Psych Sheets
- Live Results
- Prelims Live Recap: Day 1
- Finals Live Recap: Day 1
Relay lineups are out for the first day of the 2024 Short Course World Swimming Championships, and the favored Americans have brought in the big guns for finals of the women’s 400 free relay.
After relying on a monstrous 50.51 anchor split from Gretchen Walsh to pull them back into the mix in prelims (they were in 8th place after three legs), they’ve swapped in Kate Douglass and Katharine Berkoff on the first two legs, replacing Phoebe Bacon (53.39) and Jillian Cox (55.10) from the prelims relay. That relay showed that the U.S. is not very deep at this meet, having to use a distance swimmer on a sprint relay, but the good news is that most nations competing aren’t, and so there’s still some room for comfort, though they did have to use one of their big guns (Walsh) in prelims.
They will be chasing the Italians and the Germans, who were 1.3 and .8 seconds faster, respectively, in prelims than the Americans, but neither of those relays had any swimmers to swap out. Given that the Douglass-for-Cox swap alone is worth about 4.5 to 5 seconds for the Americans, they should cruise comfortably to gold in finals.
If there is a challenge, it might come from the Australians out in lane 1, who have swapped out three legs. Meg Harris, the returning leg, was only 52.2 in prelims on a rolling start, though, and so she’ll need to find another gear for them to have a shot at the Americans. Canada, adding Summer McIntosh and Penny Oleksiak in place of two breaststrokers, should challenge for medals from the other outside lanes as well, though it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll be able to chase down the Americans who are on target to challenge the World Record.
Women’s 400 Free Relay Lineups, Finals
| Lane | Nation | Swimmers | Qualifying Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Australia | Meg Harris, Milla Jansen, Alexandria Perkins, Lani Pallister | 3:31.90 |
| 2 | Sweden | Sara Junevik, Louise Hansson, Hanna Bergman, Sofia Aastedt | 3:31.56 |
| 3 | United States of America | Kate Douglass, Katharine Berkoff, Alex Shackell, Gretchen Walsh | 3:31.16 |
| 4 | Italy | Sofia Morini, Sara Curtis, Chiara Tarantino, Emma Virginia Menicucci | 3:29.86 |
| 5 | Germany | Nina Jazy, Nicole Maier, Nina Holt, Nele Schulze | 3:30.37 |
| 6 | Hungary | Nikolett Padar, Panna Ugrai, Petra Senanszky, Lilla Minna Abraham | 3:31.36 |
| 7 | Neutral Athletes B | Daria Klepikova, Daria Trofimova, Milana Stepanova, Arina Surkova | 3:31.89 |
| 8 | Canada | Mary-Sophie Harvey, Summer McIntosh, Ingrid Wilm, Penny Oleksiak | 3:34.50 |
Looks like Summer has worked on her sprint free, which is great for Canadian relays! She had a straight arm no-breath thing going on.
Split data for top 9 relays in spreadsheet format
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NAjhVEk7mIENr_UnkLNFhR9Cir1QzGEd9MJ1RLemuzA/edit?usp=sharing