2025 Italian Championships Day 4 Prelims: Sara Curtis Blasts 24.52 50 Free National Record

2025 ITALIAN CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Riccione – Swimming Stadium Pool
• April 13–17, 2025
• Prelims at 10am local (4am ET)/Senior Finals at 6pm local (12pm ET)
• World Championships Qualification
• SwimSwam Italia Event Page
• Entries
• Day 1 Prelims Recap | Day 2 Prelims Recap | Day 3 Prelims Recap
• Day 1 Finals Live Recap | Day 2 Finals Live Recap | Day 3 Finals Live Recap
• Live Results
• Livestream

While racing on the penultimate prelims session of the 2025 Italian Championships, 18-year-old Sara Curtis scorched a new lifetime best and Italian national record in the women’s 50m freestyle event.

The Centro Sportivo Esercito star stopped the clock at a time of 24.52, a result which sliced .04 off her previous Italian benchmark of 24.56 logged at last year’s edition of this competition.

The Italian Swimming Federation’s qualification standard for this year’s World Championships sits at 24.69 so Curtis has proven on more than one occasion she’s capable of achieving that goal come tonight’s final.

Capturing the 2nd seed behind Curtis this morning was 32-year-old veteran Silvia Di Pietro who notched 25.12 followed by 23-year-old Costanza Cocconcelli‘s outing of 25.29.

TOP 8

1. Sara Curtis – 24.52 ITALIAN RECORD
2. Silvia DiPietro – 25.12
3. Costanza Cocconcelli – 25.29
4. Emma Virginia Menicucci – 25.37
5. Viola Scotto by Carlo – 25.46
6. Agatha Ambler – 25.59
7. VeronicaQuaggio – 25.74
8. Matilde Biagiotti – 25.75

Curtis’ splash n’ dash performance is a follow-up to the head-turning 100m freestyle national mark she established yesterday.

En route to winning the event and qualifying for Singapore, Curtis overtook Olympic icon Federica Pellegrini‘s longstanding 1free record of 53.18 by throwing down a speedy 53.01.

These results are continuing the trajectory of this teenage prodigy. At last year’s European Junior Championships, Curtis claimed a trio of individual gold medals across the 50m free, 100m free and 50m back events in addition to earning a trifecta of relay medals.

Also last year she lowered the World Junior Record in the 50m backstroke first down to 26.08 in April then down to 26.03 at the Short Course World Championships.

Additional Top Seeds

• Alberto Razzetti led an onslaught of men’s 100m butterfly qualifiers, with the top 8 performers all delving under the 53-second barrier. He claimed the #1 seed in 52.18, slightly ahead of Edoardo Valsecchi‘s time of 52.33 and Olympic medalist Federico Burdisso‘s 52.36. Burdisso is still chasing his first World Championships qualification, having missed the mark in both the 50m and 200m fly. As for Razzetti, the 25-year-old World Championships medalist is already just .12 off his lifetime best of 52.06 from last year’s edition of this competition.
• Federica Toma was the quickest of the women’s 100m backstroke qualifiers, although it was a rather subdued series of heats with no one getting under the 1:01 threshold. Toma landed lane 4 in a result of 1:01.20, a time upon which she’ll need to greatly improve in order to clinch the QT of 59.89.
• The men’s 200m back saw Christian Bacico stake his claim on a potential sweep of the discipline. After already claiming titles in the 50m and 100m sprints, 19-year-old Bacico will try to get it done in the 2back, hitting a time of 1:59.08 as the only sub-2:00 swimmer this morning.
• Paola Borrelli topped the women’s 200m fly heats by well over a second, registering 2:10.64. She is the reigning Italian champion in this race, having earned a lifetime best of 2:09.11 at the 2024 Italian Championships.
• The men’s 200m breast saw Christian Mantegazza score the top spot in 2:12.95, the 6th-swiftest time of his career. Mantegazza just turned 20 years old last month and is a relay multi-medalist from the 2023 World Junior Championships and European Junior Championships. He already reaped 200m IM silver at this competition.