Danish women destroy 200 medley relay world record with historic split from Ottesen

After three days in Doha, both 4×50 medley relay world records have fallen, with the women’s mark dropping to the loaded Danish team.

Denmark already technically held the record from a swim just under a year ago, but this is the first time they’ll get the thrill of actually setting the record in the moment. That’s because there’s some interesting history with this record – at last year’s European Short Course Championships, both the Russian relay and the Danish relay broke the world record, with Russia swimming a bit faster and officially claiming it in the record books. But Russia’s world record was vacated earlier this year in the aftermath of Yulia Efimova‘s doping suspension, giving the mark back to Team Denmark.

But now Denmark has lowered it even further, nearly a full second below their own world record and still a half-second faster than the vacated Russian mark. That was led by butterflyer Jeanette Ottesen, who put up a split significantly faster than the corresponding one on either previous record-holding relay.

Here’s a look at the splits compared to both Denmark’s 2013 world record and the vacated 2013 Russian world record:

Those splits pretty accurately show just how fast Ottesen was. Even compared to her 2013 split, Ottesen was a full half-second faster, and she outsplit her Russian counterpart by over a second.

All four Danish women showed improvements from last year. Mie Nielsen was a tenth faster leading off, Rikke Moller Pedersen was two tenths faster on breaststroke and Pernille Blume was a couple hundredths quicker on the anchor leg. This is a foursome that’s really making waves internationally, and has really become the team to beat in both short course and long course just two years out from the Rio Olympic Games.

Also of note: in the same event, the second-place American foursome of Felicia Lee, Emma Reaney, Claire Donahue and Natalie Coughlin absolutely crushed the American record in the event, going 1:44.92. In prelims they broke the old mark of 1:49.71 using Amanda Weir on the anchor leg, and in finals they swapped out Weir for the veteran Coughlin to lower the mark another two seconds.