SwimSwam Awards: 2025 World Championships (Women’s Edition)

While China’s Yu Zidi didn’t win any individual medals at the World Championships, a trio of 4th place finishes, at only 12 years old, is an unprecedented feat.

All three finishes were very close, including a 2:06.43 in the 200 fly (missed by .31 seconds), 2:09.21 in the 200 IM (missed by .06 seconds), and 4:33.76 in the 400 IM (missed by .5 seconds). She added a relay bronze medal as a prelims leg of the women’s 800, making her the youngest swimmer to win a major international medal in history.

Another young swimmer who seemed unbothered by the moment, Yu charmed in her interviews and in her races and became the rare swimming sensation to transcend the sport to mainstream airwaves.

Honorable Mentions:

• Claire Weinstein, USA – The only junior to medal, Weinstein took bronze in the 200 free in 1:54.67 – a new best time. She also picked up a silver medal by swimming the leadoff leg of the American 800 free relay, which broke the American Record.
• Mizuki Hirai, Japan – The official World Junior Record holder in the 100 fly was about half-a-second shy of her best time, but she still did enough to qualify for a final in the women’s 100 fly individually. She ultimately placed 7th in 56.83.
• Yang Peiqi, China – The 18-year-old Yang got off to a slow start at the meet. She swam 4:06.47 in the final of the 400 free to finish 7th, four seconds slower than her best time from the Chinese Championships. But her performances picked up as the day went on. She swam 16:04.93 for 8th in the final of the 1500 free, a six-second drop, and then had a really good 1:55.84 relay split for the bronze medal winning 800 free relay. That time is .75 seconds better than her best flat-start swim.

Clutch Relay Performer – Marrit Steenberg, Netherlands

This award does not necessarily go to the fastest split(s), it goes to the swimmer who stepped up and had key splits for their relays based on their specific level of expectation. Note: the original pick was wrong, Steenberg’s relay game was underestimated. It has been rectified.

Marrit Steenberg’s decision to drop the 200 free turned out to be a fruitful one. Against a well-credentialed, but battered, 100 free field, she became the first swimmer of the meet to successfully defend a title from the underattended 2024 World Championships.

But that wasn’t even the half of the story of her performance at the meet. She carried the most important Dutch relay, the women’s 400 free relay, to a bronze medal. Her 51.64 split was not only .91 seconds faster than her win in the individual race, it dragged her relay from 8th place to 3rd.

She also split 51.91 anchoring their 4th place mixed medley relay, the fastest in that field by seven tenths, split 51.95 on a prelims mixed 400 free relay anchor and split 52.18 in finals.

Steenberg was locked in for those anchors.

Honorable Mentions:

• The swim that brought her back to the 100 free. Meg Harris‘ 50 free World Championship was the obvious front-runner for her at this meet, but her 51.87 split on the winning 400 free relay may have a broader impact for the Australian team on the way to LA. Harris was just 53.01 in the 100 free at the Australian Trials, and only swam the race in prelims to validate her spot on the relay before scratching the final. While Australia’s 400 free relay is still the best in the world, especially with 21-year-old Mollie O’Callaghan leading it, there are a lot of question marks behind her, and it is no longer the unbeatable group that it has been the last few years. But in steps Harris, who sort of had given up on the 100 free individually, splitting 51.87 – the second-fastest split of the field (behind only the individual 100 free champion Marrit Steenbergern from Netherlands).
  • After the meet, Harris said she was returning to the 100 free, and rightly so after that split. Her overall book of performances in Singapore gives her a chance to chase the medley relay anchor spot too, with MOC. While Harris only swam one relay leg at the meet, it was a big one.
• Simone Manuel, USA – Simone Manuel was only in Singapore as a relay swimmer – but USA Swimming put her to work. One of the country’s legendary sprinters of all-time, Manuel swam six relay legs to help chew up some prelims slots for a team that became really thin after illness, and swim some key legs in finals. Manuel was sort of the opposite of Harris: while no one leg stood out for her at the meet, the totality of her body of work was crucial to the team winning the medals table.
• Lani Pallister, Australia – Maybe lost in the wake of her incredible run to silver in the 800 free was Pallister’s 800 free relay split. She led off the Australian relay with a 1:54.77 split in finals, which was a new lifetime best and the fastest leadoff leg in the field. That helped catapult Australia to gold ahead of the Americans.
• Anna Peplowski, USA – In that same relay, Anna Peplowski gave the U.S. a lead after her 2nd-leg split of 1:54.75. Prelims and finals of the 800 free relay were her only races of the meet, and her split was a full .95 seconds better than the flat-start 1:55.70 she did at US Nationals to qualify for the meet (which is her lifetime best). That’s a huge step-up and cements her as a fixture for this relay heading towards the Olympics.
• Kate Douglass, USA – Before the meet, Daniel Takata ran some data on how rare it was for all four swimmers on a relay to be under their flat-start times on flying legs (an assumption that I think we all as swim people make too easily). That even showed up in the World Record setting 400 medley relay, where both Regan Smith and Gretchen Walsh were slower than the times they did in the individual event. Torri Huske, however, was not on the freestyle anchor, and Kate Douglass had the superhero split of 1:04.27 on the breaststroke leg. That was a full second better than the 1:05.27 that she swam for silver in the 100 breaststroke final.