2025 World Champs Preview: Sjostrom’s Pregnancy Leaves Opportunity in the Women’s 50 Free

2025 World Championships

• July 27 – August 3, 2025 (pool swimming)
• Singapore, Singapore
• World Aquatics Championships Arena
• LCM (50m)
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Women’s 50 Free – By the Numbers

• World Record: 23.61 – Sarah Sjostrom, Sweden (2023)
• World Junior Record: 24.17 – Claire Curzan, USA (2021)
• World Championships Record: 23.61 – Sarah Sjostrom, Sweden (2023)
• 2024 Olympic Champion: Sarah Sjostrom, Sweden – 23.71

Returning 2024 Olympic Finalists

• Silver – Meg Harris (AUS), 4th – Gretchen Walsh (USA), 5th – Kasia Wasick (POL), 7th – Wu Qingfeng (CHN)

2024-2025 World Top 10

Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom has dominated this 50 free in recent years, winning the Paris 2024 Olympic gold medal and three straight long course World Championship gold medals from 2022-2024. But she is now out on maternity leave; her absence, along with half of the Olympic final and six of the top 10 finishers from Paris, leaves a wide open field for the World Championship this year.

Olympic Bronze medalist Zhang Yufei of China will swim only the 100 fly individually at this year’s meet, with her spot being taken by 19-year-old Cheng Yujie. 6th place finisher Neza Klancar is dealing with a shoulder injury, while 8th-place finisher Shayna Jack of Australia didn’t qualify for the Australian team in anything this year.

This leaves a trio of clear front-runners for gold at this year’s World Championships. Unlike some sprint events, where the world’s swimming superpowers Australia and the USA aren’t really contenders, this 50 free field is dominated by the mega-nations.

Meg Harris (Photo Credit: Delly Carr/Swimming Australia)

The top three seeds in the race are American Gretchen Walsh, Australian Meg Harris, and American Torri Huske, who are all seeded with 23.9s. They’re all a similar age (Walsh 22, Harris 23, Huske 22), and, in spite of all having serious international accomplishments, all seem to really be coming into their own in their early 20s.

Walsh has the clear momentum of the group, absolutely dominating the field at the World Short Course Championships last December and setting a World Record in the 100 meter fly mid-season in May in Ft. Lauderdale.

Harris, meanwhile, has the pedigree, having shown up biggest under the brightest light at the Olympic Games. She was two tenths better than her lifetime best in the Olympic final, which in the 50 free is massive. In fact, she was one of only two swimmers in that Olympic final to go a best time – the other being Klancar, who shocked the field by dropping .35 seconds to climb to 6th place.

She swam 24.17 at Australian Trials, which is a tenth ahead of scheduled from last year, so that’s another positive sign.

Then there is Huske, who after struggling in 2023 has been on an absolute tear over the last two years and appears to be building toward something special in Singapore. She swam a best time of 23.98 at Trials to break through at U.S. Trials, beating out Kate Douglass for the second spot behind Walsh. This has been an event that Huske has previously been unable to conquer domestically and race internationally.

In a race this tight, they are not the only medal contenders, but on paper they are the front-runners, and will be a fun trio and rivalry to watch for the rest of the 2020s.

China Rising

The Chinese women are another global power who project to be well-represented in the final.

Wu Qingfeng was 7th at the Olympic Games last year, and has already posted a best time of 24.18 this season. She added time in both of her individual races at last year’s Games. She will face a bigger schedule this year (adding the 50 fly to her lineup) and will be a more important part of the overall Chinese success, so she’ll have to stand up to that pressure and reverse the course to win a medal in the 50 free this year.

The other Chinese entry is a new face, Cheng Yujie. The 19-year-old, good enough to push superstar and Olympic silver medalist Zhang Yufei out of the 50 free, swam only a relay at last year’s Olympic Games. She split 52.76 on the 2nd leg of China’s bronze medal and Asian Record setting women’s 400 free relay.

She didn’t really progress much at this year’s Chinese Championships in that 100 free, but she did post a big drop in the 50 of four-tenths from last year. Developing into more of a well-rounded swimmer, she also knocked almost five seconds off her time in the 200 free.

She enters the meet as the 7th seed.

Demonstrable 23-Second Ability

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

There is only one other woman in the field who has demonstrated the ability to swim a 23-second 50 free. Poland’s Kasia Wasick is one of 17 women ever, and 8 active women, to have broken the 24-second barrier in this race, and she did it not that long ago – at the World Championships in Doha in February.

At 33, Wasick is the oldest contender in the field (and maybe the oldest swimmer, though we didn’t check everyone).

She was 5th in the Olympic final, which was her slowest time of the three rounds, in 24.33. The seemingly-ageless Wasick, who has trained in the United States now for most of her career, is still a factor in this race. While World Aquatics’ devilishly-tight qualifying window makes her the 5th seed, she would, in fact, be the #2 seed if last year’s World Championships were included (and it seems like they should be).

European Women Trying to Make the Leap

There is then a logjam of European women in the 24.2-24.4 second range who are trying to stand out from the pack.

Europeans in the field:

• Kasia Wasick (Poland) – 24.20, 5th seed
• Milou Van Wijk (Netherlands) – 24.23 – 6th seed
• Arina Surkova (Neutral Athletes) – 24.34 – 8th seed
• Florine Gaspard (Belgium) – 24.42 – 9th seed
• Sara Curtis (Italy) – 24.43 – 10th seed
• Eva Okaro (Great Britain) – 24.48 – 12th seed
• Beryl Gastaldello (France) – 24.49 – 13th seed

Everyone in this group has reason to believe that they have the potential to make the final, if not steal a podium spot if the front-runners slip. The list includes a lot of young talent who are chasing the group of very-experienced veterans ahead of them in an interesting clash of age with not much in between.

Van Wijk, only 21, picked up the torch of the Dutch sprinting legacy in a substantial way this season. Her best time coming into the calendar year was a 24.86 from April. She has been faster than that 15 times in 2025 already, lowering all the way to a 24.23.

That’s an age group-level progression in her 20s (which we’ve seen from other Dutch women in the past), and makes her a serious contender headed toward the Los Angeles Olympics, if not sooner.

Arina Surkova, a neutral athlete from Russia, was facing her own meteoric rise when her country’s invasion of Ukraine interrupted her international competition in 2022. She seems to be back on track, having been 24.34 last year.

Florine Gaspard of Belgium has benefited hugely from the federation’s hiring of new head coach Mark Faber, who previously coached in the Netherlands. Gaspard has been the six best times of her career this season, marking a total drop of around .23 seconds, after not going a best time at all in 2024.

Curtis (.13 seconds) and Okaro (.43 seconds) have both also hit best times next year and are scheduled to move to train in the U.S. in the American collegiate system next season at Virginia and Texas, respectively. Both are just 18-years-old.

Even the 30-year-old veteran Beryl Gastaldello has been a best time this year – dropping a 24.49 in Montpellier in June at the French Championships. She has improved her best time by .33 seconds over the last two years combined, another example (like Wasick and Sjostrom) that female sprint freestylers are not necessarily past their competitive primes in their 30s.

Other Names to Watch

• Marritt Steenbergen has dropped the 200 free and 200 IM at this year’s World Championships to pursue the sprint events. While her lifetime best of 24.42 is from 2023, her 24.68 in Saint-Denis in May shows that she’s regaining her speed. Still only 25, Steenbergen has had a long and winding career. If she’s winding up for her next chapter, this year might be too soon to contend, but she has reinvented her swimming before, so I wouldn’t count her out for 2027, 2028, or beyond in this 50 free.
• Analia Pigree has had a big year for France. At Trials, she posted a 24.64, which is her best time by .17 seconds. She had stagnated in this 50 free from 2022 to 2024, but over the last 12 months has really found a breakthrough.
• Canadian Taylor Ruck hasn’t been a best time in this 50 free since 2018, but that belies her bounce-back 2024 year that saw her swim the nine best times of her career that weren’t in 2018. So far in 2025 she has been 24.96.
• Australia’s other entry, Olivia Wunsch, swam 24.70 at Australian Trials to tie with Alexandria Perkins for 2nd at Trials. Wunsch ultimately took the spot for Singapore. Truly she benefited from a sluggish field in South Australia, as she’s recovering from glandular fever (aka mono). It’s truly hard to predict how that’s going to play out for her at Worlds. Her best is 24.45 and she’s still only 19, so a final is certainly possible.

Conclusions

I think Walsh, already a World Record holder, leveled-up again at the Short Course World Championships. Any lingering demons of inconsistency from her younger years can now be safely packed away.

Behind her, it’s easy to trust the consistency of Harris.

Things get interesting on the third pick. While Wasick certainly has pedigree, she hasn’t been as fast (or racing as much) this year as she has in the past. There’s not a lot of margin to “pull off the gas” in this 50 free, and while Huske has a lot more races to swim over the course of the week (this is one of the last finals), I think she’ll grab a medal here.

SwimSwam’s Picks

Darkhorse: Roos Vanotterdijk (Belgium) – While the women’s 50 free hasn’t found many bolts from the blue lately, with Klancar the exception at last year’s Olympics, I think Vanotterdijk has all the makings of a darkhorse. Only 20, she has followed a similar arc this season to her training partner Gaspard, swimming the five best times of her career and dropping .34 seconds in total. While she started further behind Gaspard entering the year (25.17 versus 24.65), the pattern has been very similar none-the-less. That doesn’t feel like a coincidence.