2025 Pro Swim Series – Fort Lauderdale
- Wednesday, April 30 – Saturday, May 3, 2025
- Fort Lauderdale Aquatic Center – Fort Lauderdale, Florida
- LCM (50 meters)
- Live Results
- Live Recaps
This past week at the Pro Swim Series in Fort Lauderdale, Katie Ledecky put on a show. She threw down the 2nd fastest performance all-time in the 1500 free (2nd to her world record from 2018), her own 2nd fastest performance in the 400 free (and her fastest since 2016), and, as a grande finale, broke her own world record in the 800 free that many observers (including me!) figured to be completely untouchable.
That swim marked the 17th individual world record of Ledecky’s career, and her 15th in long course meters. It came 4,295 days after her first world record — the 15:36.53 she swam on July 30th, 2013, to break Kate Ziegler‘s mark in the 1500. That was nearly 12 years ago. This begged the question: What is the longest time a swimmer has gone between their first and their last world records?
As of today, if we plot how many individual long course world records a swimmer has against their longevity, we get this chart:
Perhaps not surprising to see Michael Phelps off to the side there. But it’s easy to forget that Ledecky does not even have the longest career! Sarah Sjostrom broke her first world record in July 2009 (56.44 in the 100 fly), and her most recent one was in July 2023 (23.61 in the 50 free), a span of 14 years and three days. More recently, we’ve seen the comeback of Ruta Meilutyte — her world records stretching from July 2013 to July 2023.
And more than a century earlier, I thought Duke Kahanamoku was worth a mention. He broke three world records, set eight years apart (from July 1912 to August 1920).
If we add short-course meters into the mix, the picture changes slightly:
We now see Katinka Hosszu, who set 20 records in just four years, 18 of which were in short course meters. At the very bottom of the chart, a fun data point is Amaury Leveaux. He broke five individual world records in his career, all in an eight-day span — from December 6th to December 14th, 2008.
And also shooting off into the sun, there is Gretchen Walsh. After breaking her own world record in the 100 fly twice last week, she has now set 13 individual world records in a span of merely 322 days. What a year she’s had!
I’ll say it again – Hackett was unbelievably good. Harder for a male to have many years between world records as they mature later.
Such a cool analysis! Has there been any analysis done on the age of world record holders when they set their records? Of the current LCM records, Andriy Govorov’s 50 Fly at 31.2 years old and Sarah Sjostrom’s 50 Free at 29.9 years old are the two oldest, I think. Adding in SCM, it might Nicholas Santos’ old 50 Fly WR, which was set when he was 38 years old.
Interesting!
Please don’t include scm in any analysis.
Good article!