The United States and Australia are two powerhouse swimming countries. In women’s swimming in particular, the two have had many epic relay battles, often trading world records back and forth.
Heading into the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia had held the world record in the 400 medley relay since the 2004 Olympic Games, and they were showing no signs of slowing down.
The team of Emily Seebohm, Leisel Jones, Jessicah Schipper, and Libby Lenton put together an impressive swim in the final in front of a roaring Australian crowd, battling it out with the Americans once again. A dream-team relay of four of the best to ever do what they do, the emergence of then-14 year old Emily Seebohm filled out the relay just in time for the home Championships.
It was the USA’s Natalie Coughlin that took the lead on the backstroke leg, edging Seebohm by 0.13. Their margin in the individual race was over a second, so Seebohm’s hold of serve on that leg was a gutsy swim for a young athlete. With the last 3 legs the Australians had, that was all they needed from her.
The field was bunched together on the breaststroke leg, but it didn’t take long for Jones to take over the lead for the Australians, which carried into the butterfly leg.
Rachel Komisarz went in for the US against Schipper, the world champion in the 200m butterfly. Schipper extended the Australians’ lead enough for freestyler Libby Lenton to seal the win. By this point it was no longer a question of whether or not the Australians would win; it was whether or not they would break the world record.
Ultimately, they did, finishing in 3:55.74, over two seconds ahead of the US (3:58.31). The battle for third was tight, but China managed to edge out Great Britain for the bronze by less than a tenth.
MY SWIM COACH SWAM FOR CHINA HERE, so cool to see her swim!!
Truly epic? The world record in the women’s 4 x 100 meters medley relay was broken in calendar years 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009. The world record in the women’s 4 x 100 meters medley relay set at the 2012 London Olympics stood for nearly five years.
Meanwhile, Allison Schmitt still owns the fastest textile performance in the women’s 200 meter freestyle set at the 2012 London Olympics. That’s epic on the biggest stage of all, as well as textile!
Please stop dampening great swims!! Yes the WR was broken in that many years but you can’t deny that the Australian team did fantastically well
Australia broke that WR 2004 2006 2007 & 2008 . They were Olympic , World & Commonwealth Champs then defended their World & Olympic Titles all in consecutive years.
An Epic run indeed .
Weren’t there also these little suits that also helped a bit in
and 09? No disrespect to those two teams, just aiming to remind any legendary performance from 2007 and prior was going to get overshadowed by that era.
Adam peaty broke the 100 breast WR almost every year consecutively since 2015, so I guess none of his swims are epic?
Australia and the US women have medalled in every relay in the last three games- an amazing rivalry and a credit to the depth and superstars in both teams!
What a combination of talent. A golden age of swimming. Hopefully more to come soon for Australia and it looks promising.
I’ve read the article with a growing surprise: that was really an epic swim but not an epic report indeed.
1) The main mistake in this report is in this phrase: Schipper extended the Australians’ lead enough for freestyler Libby Lenton to seal the win. Not really because the splits were 57.18 for Schipper and 57.06 for Komisarz, so Komisarz was (surprisingly considering their PBs) faster than Schipper.
2) Moreover there was no need to extend Aussie lead for Lenton in the last leg, because Lenton was considerably quicker than Nymeyer, as confirmed by the splits in that relay (52.83 for Lenton, 54.22 for Nymeyer).
3) Moreover not enough credit to the huge breastroke split from… Read more »
this is an actually awesome analysis. thank you