Sunday’s World Record Haul Will Be a Day That Swimming Remembers Forever

Sunday in Fukuoka was not the first time in swimming history when three World Records were broken in the same day.

In fact, it’s relatively-common, and is not even closer to the World Record for World Records in a day (every day of the 2009 World Championships, for example, saw more than three records broken).

While a gold-medalless day for the Americans might leave US swim fans feeling as though the meet opening was a bit of a clunker, in reality, this might have been one of the best days of swimming we’ve ever seen.

Frenchman Leon Marchand broke the longest-standing World Record that organized pool swimming has ever seen, a record that was almost as old as he is, a record set by the greatest to ever don the goggles, Michael Phelps. And Marchand didn’t sneak under that record – he knocked 1.3 seconds off the mark, rewriting the book on a record that wasn’t seriously challenged for more than two decades.

The record broken by Titmus was not nearly as old – it was set by Canadian teen sensation Summer McIntosh at Canadian Trials in March, and before that by Titmus herself at the Australian Championships in 2022.

But her 3:55.38 now moved her over a second ahead of American Katie Ledecky, the swimmer who rewrote what was possible in this event.

And then there were the Australian women. They have owned the World Record in the 400 free relay for almost a decade, and yet on Sunday, they annihilated the Tokyo 2020 Olympic relay that put our collective jaws on the floor. Their 3:27.96 meant that they became the first relay to ever average under 52 seconds each (51.99).

All World Records are mind-blowing, but all three of those records are extremely special. They’re the kind of swims that change the way we think about an event. It wasn’t long ago that a 4:07 felt like it gave a guy a chance at a title in the 400 IM. We used to get excited about a country having more-than-one 52-second split. Breaking 4 minutes in the 400 free used to make you a Hall of Famer.

And now, those barriers are a distant echo from the records we saw on Sunday.

And none of them were American, though one of them, Marchand, has trained primarily in America in the leadup to the World Championships (under Bob Bowman, who was also the lifelong coach of Phelps).

The rest are Australian – a country that in the last decade showed repeated signs of talent, but until recently couldn’t pull that talent together into big international success. After things hit rock bottom for the Australians with the Stilnox scandal, the country re-evaluated its culture and its approach to the sport, and they have risen to meet the global challenge.

Meanwhile, the American team feels like it’s waiting for the current teenage generation to meet their destiny. The first day’s events that the US has dominated for so long – 14 wins in 20 tries in the men’s 400 free relay, Katie Ledecky‘s four titles in the 400 free, Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte’s combined four titles in the 400 IM.

The Americans do have gold medals left to come at this meet; it’s not going to be a total washout, and this was a day that was always going to be a tough one for Team USA.

But this might be the year, 2023 leading into the 2024 Paris Olympics, where the promised oncoming of an increasing global pool of talent is beginning to crest. And that improved global pool of talent is leading to swims that would have felt unfathomable in 2012 or 2016 when the US was the singularly dominant world power.

If that pool of talent can run headlong into the blooming of the American youth movement for the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, then an event that will be unlike all others for so many reasons could provide a swimming spectacle unlike any we’ve ever seen as well.