2024 Short Course World Championships
- December 10-15, 2024
- Duna Arena, Budapest, Hungary
- SCM (25m)
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- Prelims Live Recap: Day 1 | Day 2
- Finals Live Recap: Day 1
The lineups for the final of the mixed 200 medley relay on Wednesday are out, and the United States won’t be using their two star women, Gretchen Walsh and Kate Douglass, in the event.
The two swimmers, including World Record breaker in the individual 50 fly Walsh, both have other events on Wednesday evening among big schedules throughout the meet. Walsh will swim the 50 fly final (#1 seed) and 100 free semifinal (#1 seed), while Douglass will swim the 100 free semi-final (#4 seed).
Both swimmers already have multiple swims under their belts and many to come later in the meet. With every swimmer eligible for six relays, these sort of choices were inevitable. They will instead be swapped out for Regan Smith, a very good 100 and 200 butterflier who doesn’t swim the 50 often, and Katharine Berkoff, a sprint backstroker who has really developed well in the sprint freestyle races in the latter part of her career.
Smith and Berkoff will both race the 100 back final, as the #1 and #2 seeds, on Wednesday evening as well.
The only American pulling double duty from prelims is backstroker Shaine Casas, while Michael Andrew will swim the breaststroke leg. While Andrew has not been having a great meet so far, using a male on the breaststroke leg is one of the golden rules of the mixed medleys (and every relay has done so).
The top seeded Canadians, meanwhile, will reuse their prelims relay that had a .02 second advantage over Sweden in prelims (which is also using the same relay). Those two relays had only a few-tenths margin over the Americans in prelims, so just like we saw Wednesday, it will be hard for either team to hold on to gold.
The #4 Australians, #6 Neutral Athletes B, #7 Italians, and #8 Dutch all also made significant upgrades to their quartets
Relay Lineups By Seed
| Lane | Nation | Swimmer 1 (Backstroke) | Swimmer 2 (Breaststroke) | Swimmer 3 (Butterfly) | Swimmer 4 (Freestyle) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Canada | Kylie Masse | Finlay Knox | Ilya Kharun | Ingrid Wilm |
| 5 | Sweden | Louise Hansson | Daniel Kertes | Sara Junevik | Elias Persson |
| 3 | United States of America | Shaine Casas | Michael Andrew | Regan Smith | Katharine Berkoff |
| 6 | Australia | Isaac Cooper | Joshua Yong | Alexandria Perkins | Meg Harris |
| 2 | Japan | Kaiya Seki | Taku Taniguchi | Mizuki Hirai | Yume Jinno |
| 7 | Neutral Athletes B | Miron Lifintsev | Kirill Prigoda | Arina Surkova | Daria Trofimova |
| 1 | Italy | Lorenzo Mora | Simone Cerasuolo | Silvia di Pietro | Sara Curtis |
| 8 | Netherlands | Maaike de Waard | Caspar Corbeau | Tessa Giele | Nyls Korstanje |
Relay Lineups by Lane Order
| Lane | Nation | Swimmer 1 (Backstroke) | Swimmer 2 (Breaststroke) | Swimmer 3 (Butterfly) | Swimmer 4 (Freestyle) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Italy | Lorenzo Mora | Simone Cerasuolo | Silvia di Pietro | Sara Curtis |
| 2 | Japan | Kaiya Seki | Taku Taniguchi | Mizuki Hirai | Yume Jinno |
| 3 | United States of America | Shaine Casas | Michael Andrew | Regan Smith | Katharine Berkoff |
| 4 | Canada | Kylie Masse | Finlay Knox | Ilya Kharun | Ingrid Wilm |
| 5 | Sweden | Louise Hansson | Daniel Kertes | Sara Junevik | Elias Persson |
| 6 | Australia | Isaac Cooper | Joshua Yong | Alexandria Perkins | Meg Harris |
| 7 | Neutral Athletes B | Miron Lifintsev | Kirill Prigoda | Arina Surkova | Daria Trofimova |
| 8 | Netherlands | Maaike de Waard | Caspar Corbeau | Tessa Giele | Nyls Korstanje |
RIP Team USA
MAndrew needs to step up
The understatement of the century.
strange that canada is using wilm for freestyle. ig they did say relays aren’t a focus
shes our best 50 freestyler short course tho…
Italy looks dangerous 🔥🔥
Russians might be quite strong here hmm.
It makes sense to not have Gretchen be on the relay with her other two events but I think Kate could’ve swam the freestyle leg.
I agree, but Douglass is going to have a beast of a workload throughout the rest of the week, so it may be about managing her load early so they can make use of her in later relays – and keep her individual events as strong as possible.
This relay will be chaotic. Honestly think only Japan is out of medal contention, all other 7 nations could realistically win a medal.