The Fastest Heats In History Part I: 400 Freestyle

Courtesy: Henry Lyon

As a community, swim fans love to see someone touch the wall in an incredibly fast time. It’s one of the major driving factors for watchers of the sport to come back: The possibility of seeing the winner finish in a new world-leading time, or maybe a new national record, or perhaps even a world record. However, something even more exciting to see can be a whole heat that exceeds expectations. Sometimes, legends of the sport line up behind the blocks at the perfect time in their careers and give us a whole field of swimmers that is faster than any other heat before it.

This is a series I wanted to do in the lead-up to this year’s World Championships in July. Every few days, I’ll release a new article on both the women’s and men’s sides of a long course meters event, in order of their first finals appearance in this year’s Worlds schedule. Sometimes, there will be a definitive answer, but I’ll always bring up multiple that are significant for their own reasons. Also, while I may sometimes bring up “greatest” heats of all time, the goal of this series is to discuss the fastest heats of all time regardless of circumstance (as long as they were in compliance with FINA/World Aquatics rules when swum), and that will therefore be the focus of the data and discussion presented. As will be the case for every article in this series, please feel free to mention any you think I should have mentioned in the comments.

Women

American Katie Ledecky and Australian Ariarne Titmus have made sure the finals of the women’s 400 free at international meets have had outstanding winning times for over a decade, with one of the two of them topping the podium at every Olympic or World Championships since 2013, save for the 2024 Doha World Championships, which neither attended. These winning times have never been slower than 3:59.8, and that fact in and of itself is impressive on its own. However, which heat has been the most impressive outside of the winning time alone?

There is one that comes to mind almost immediately: The 2023 World Championships final. This was a highly anticipated showdown between the two aforementioned 400 free stars, as well as at the time newly-minted world record holder Summer McIntosh, who had taken Titmus’s 3:56.40 world record at Canadian Trials just a few months earlier in 3:56.08. These three women were, no questions asked, the fastest 400 freestylers of all time, and they were about to meet in Fukuoka.

Some quick facts on the lead-up to this race:

• All three women had held the world record at some point in their careers
• They were the only ones to ever have broken 3:59, and all had been 3:56
• Their PBs only had a range of 38 hundredths of a second, from 3:56.08 to 3:56.46

Only one of them would end up going a best time, with Ariarne Titmus taking the gold medal in a new world record of 3:55.38, taking the record back from McIntosh. Ledecky claimed silver almost three and a half seconds back, in 3:58.73.

Unexpectedly, McIntosh missed the podium, being overtaken by New Zealand’s Erika Fairweather, who snuck into bronze with a 3:59.59, her first time under 4:00, becoming only the fifth woman to ever do so. McIntosh did get under that barrier, too, however, getting 4th in 3:59.94.

The significance of this heat is that not only is it the only time more than two women have been sub-4 in a single 400 free heat, it’s also the only time more than three women have been sub-4 in a single 400 free heat. Outside of this final, a sub-4 has always been good for at least a second-place finish, though here it didn’t even get a medal for one athlete. Not only that, it includes the still-standing world record, meaning it also had the fastest winning time of all time.

While this is the deepest of any women’s 400 free, with the fastest gold, bronze, and fourth-place times in any recorded race, there is another heat that’s worth mentioning: The 2020(1) Olympic Games final, which had the fastest silver medal-winning time.

This heat has the same 1st and 2nd-place finishers as the race we just discussed, with Ariarne Titmus and Katie Ledecky going 1-2. This was a much-anticipated rematch between the two following Titmus’s upset of Ledecky at the 2019 World Championships, handing her her first 400 free loss in a final of a meet since 2012. The race lived up to the hype, with Titmus touching first in a near-world record time of 3:56.69, a new personal best. Ledecky was just behind in 3:57.36.

This is by far the fastest silver-medal winning time in history, with it being the only time the 2nd-place finisher was under 3:58. That 3:57.36 would have won the 2024 Paris Olympics, the 2022 World Championships, and many others before it. While not as deep as the 2023 final, I figured it was still worth mentioning.

So what can we expect this year? Titmus has already stated she is out for the year, which leaves one of the key players in these races off the table. McIntosh, Ledecky, and Fairweather will likely all be in Singapore, though, meaning we could see a very impressive 1-2-3 punch. If Ledecky and McIntosh are anywhere near their peak form, and Fairweather gets under 3:58, that would mark the first heat in history where it took a sub-3:59 to podium, which would be a remarkable feat. In any case, it should be an incredible race.

Here are the fastest heats in history under a few different criteria:

Fastest times of each place in the top 8

Something interesting about this table is how fast 6-8 were in Paris at the Olympics, with all three being the fastest-ever for their respective places. In fact, it took a 4:03.83 to even make the final, with 4:04.96 taking 8th in the big show. This was more difficult to research, but that appears to be the fastest time needed to get into an ‘A’ final of all time, though not by much. It took a 4:04.07 to make it back at the Olympics in Tokyo, but finishers 5-8 added significantly in the final, going 4:04.98, 4:06.81, 4:08.01, and 4:10.10. In Paris, only two swimmers added, with one of them only adding six one hundredths of a second and the other just over a second and a half. The time to make it back in Rio 2016 was 4:04.36, which also saw a significant time dropoff in the final for the 5-8 finishers, albeit not as striking as in Tokyo.

Fastest heats using average times

Note: Average was used instead of median to account for outliers. Usually, outliers should be eliminated, but for the sake of this article, I wanted them included. Also, finding the median would just mean the middle place or the average between the two middle places, which doesn’t take into account the possible comparatively extreme highs and lows surrounding it/them.

In the current age of the women’s 400 free, it’s rare for multiple of the top swimmers to meet outside of World Championships/Olympics, so this table is most likely comprehensive, as every one of these meets was taken into consideration. Once again, the 2023 World Championships final takes up the most spots, though the unmatched 5-8 depth seen in the Paris final that was discussed earlier slots it into a few spots further down the table.

It’s also important to mention the 2009 World Championship final in Rome, which saw Frederica Pellegrini of Italy become the first woman under 4:00 in 3:59.15. Not only that, two other women cracked 4:01, with former world record holder Joanne Jackson and Rebecca Adlington, both of Great Britain, going 4:00.60 and 4:00.79, respectively. While not one of the fastest podiums of all time, period, it is one of the fastest podiums without people named Katie Ledecky, Ariarne Titmus, Summer McIntosh, or Erika Fairweather.

With all this data in mind, it’s up to you to decide which you think is the fastest/greatest women’s 400 free heat in history. We are living in one of the fastest periods in the event’s history, and there will almost certainly be more potential additions to this list in the coming years

Men

Only six men have ever broken 3:41 in the 400 free, and only once have multiple men done it in the same heat. At the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Tokyo Olympic champion Ahmed Hafnaoui of Tunisia and Australian Sam Short went head-to-head and gave us one of the most exciting finishes in swimming history. Short narrowly outtouched Hafnaoui 3:40.68 to 3:40.70, with both cracking 3:41 for the first time. Lukas Märtens of Germany rounded out the podium in 3:42.20, the fastest bronze-medal winning time in nearly a decade and a half. This race had the fastest silver medal-winning time of any heat in the history of the event, and also one of the fastest bronze medal-winning times in history to boot, cementing it as one of the fastest 400 freestyle races in history.

The other contender for fastest podium in history, depending on your definition of the term, is the 2009 World Championship final, which infamously saw Paul Biedermann of Germany break Ian Thorpe’s world record by 0.01 seconds in 3:40.07. This record was broken by the aforementioned Lukas Märtens this year, but Biedermann’s time still stands as the second-fastest in history. Not only that, the silver and bronze positions included two 3:41-lows: Tunisian Ous Mellouli in 3:41.11 and Chinese swimmer Zhang Lin in 3:41.35. That is the fastest bronze medal-winning time in history, with it being the only time in history a 3:41 did not yield a silver medal or better.

A few other fast podiums worth mentioning:

• The 2016 Olympic Games saw two men under 3:42: Mack Horton of Australia in 3:41.55 and Sun Yang of China in 3:41.68. The bronze medal time was not quite as impressive, although still noteworthy, as Italian Gabriele Detti nabbed the 3rd-place spot in 3:43.49
• The first non-International meet appears here, with Elijah Winnington and Sam Short’s performances at the 2024 Australian Open, where they swam respective times of 3:41.41 and 3:41.64. Bronze came in at 3:45.12

The heats mentioned above are a comprehensive list of every race that involved two or more swimmers sub-3:42. However, podium finishes are not all that matters when looking at full heats. A good example of this is the 2024 Olympic final, which saw five men sub-3:43. The podium times there were (relative to the earlier mentioned races) not as fast, but both Sam Short (3:42.64) and Brazil’s Guilherme Costa (3:42.76) were left out of medals with times that would have medaled in every single 400 before them. Not only is this the only instance of a 3:42 missing a podium, but it is also the only time two 3:42s missed a podium. In the previously discussed 2009 World Champs final, American Peter Vanderkaay swam to a time of 3:43.20 for 4th, which is the next fastest podium-missing time behind Short and Costa’s 2024 finishes, making that Paris final arguably the deepest in history. For reference on how deep this field was, fifth-place Costa actually broke the Americas record in the event, meaning that was the fastest swim by any person from North, Central, or South America. And still four swimmers beat him.

As we saw on the women’s side, sometimes the last three to five finishers can show significant depth in a heat as well. This was the case for the already discussed 2023 World Championships final, where fourth through eighth all fell within the range of 3:43.58 and 3:44.33, making it the only heat with every swimmer under 3:45. It is important to note that the 2020 Olympic Games and 2019 World Championships finals saw the 8th place time at 3:45.39 and 3:45.78, close behind.

Now for the data:

Fastest times of each place in the top 8

As alluded to earlier, the 2023 World Championship final shows a great amount of non-podium depth on the men’s side, just like for the women. Now, let’s see how that affects the average times table.

Fastest heats using average time

The most striking part of this table is how it really puts the top-end speed of the 2009 World Championship final on display, while also showcasing the incredible depth of the 2023 World Championships final. The 2009 final truly had some unmatched speed, although it is important to note that the 2023 final was actually very close for the first three rows, coming in at 3:40.69, 3:41.19, and 3:41.79, respectively, only a few tenths behind in each case.

In my personal opinion, the above factors combined with it being the only heat with multiple sub-3:41 swims make the 2023 World Championships final both the fastest and the greatest 400 free final in men’s swimming history, though that can, of course, be debated. Either way, the 2009 World Championships final has a lot of impressive statistics going for it, putting it at a close second in my mind.

As for the future of the event, the sky appears to be the limit. Lukas Märtens’ recent record-breaking sub 3:40 could pave the way for even more remarkable races in the coming years, and Singapore will see the return of Märtens, Short, Winnington, Olympic bronze medalist Kim Woomin, Paris 5th place finisher and all-American record holder Guilherme Costa, as well as other potential rising stars like Germany’s Oliver Klemet, who just blasted a PB of 3:43.40 in Stockholm, American Rex Maurer, who made waves in the NCAA this year, and potentially even Frenchman Leon Marchand, who has been training in Australia and working on freestyle. He will swim the event for the first time in a while this week in Fort Lauderdale, which could lead to him swimming it in Singapore. Despite the loss of Hafnaoui to a doping suspension, the event seems to have reloaded with even more speed.

One final note: It’s hard to talk about the 400 free without bringing up Ian Thorpe, the world record holder for eight years and the textile record holder until just this year, but he was unfortunately so ahead of his time that he never swam in a heat deep enough to warrant a spot here. While Grant Hackett swam incredible times with Thorpe on occasion, those times are not fast enough to compare with the other races discussed here. They are, however, certainly in the conversation for greatest heats of all time, but sadly not the fastest.

Research for a topic like this is difficult and time-consuming, so it’s very likely that I missed some noteworthy facts or have some incorrect information. Feel free to correct any errors in the comments.

ABOUT HENRY LYON

Henry Lyon is a distance swimmer with M3 Aquatics located in Chicago, Illinois. He has been swimming since the age of eight, and has been passionate about the sport ever since the beginning. Still only a junior in high school, he hopes to go on to make a difference in the sport as he gets older, starting with his work on the Illinois Swimming Age Group Committee, as well as working as a swim instructor for M3A’s swim school. He hopes to continue both of those things going into college and beyond.