American Kate Douglass broke the world record in the women’s 200 breaststroke (SCM) twice during the 2024 Swimming World Cup, delivering a jaw-dropping performance in her second swim. Douglass’ time of 2:12.72 was simply astounding, due in part to the fact that the previous world record, held by Rebecca Soni at 2:14.57, had been on the books for 15 years.
The swim from Douglass made her 1.85 seconds faster than the second-fastest performer of all time.
Did this performance make Douglass’ 200 breast the most dominant SCM world record on the books, relative to the rest of the world?
Swimming Stats’ Instagram page has published the most dominant SCM world records in terms of the % difference between the world record and the second-fastest performer of all time. An interesting note is that the top world records were highly affected by the results of the 2024 World Cup, both for men and women.
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As it turns out, Douglass’ 200 breaststroke world record does stand atop the list with the biggest percentage gap to the second-fastest performer. The 1.85 seconds that separates Douglass and Soni represents 1.37%, the highest among all world records, including men and women. Usually, differences above 1% are considered truly outstanding, and only one other women’s events has a difference above 1%: Katie Ledecky‘s 1500 freestyle.
In men’s events, two world records have differences of 1.28%: Tomoru Honda (JPN) in the 200 butterfly with his 1:46.85 and Caeleb Dressel (USA) in the 100 IM with his blistering time of 49.28 from the ISL. Honda edges ahead for the #1 spot due to topping Dressel in the third decimal digit: 1.284% x 1.282%.
Honda’s world record was groundbreaking, having improved Daiya Seto‘s previous world record by 1.39 seconds in 2022. In the same swim, Honda became the first man to crack both the 1:48 and 1:47 barriers.
But this ranking was also affected by the results of the 2024 World Cup. In Singapore, Leon Marchand set a new European Record in the 100 IM in 49.92, becoming the second swimmer to crack the 50-second barrier in a time 1.28% slower than Dressel. But, if it wasn’t for Marchand, the second-fastest performer in history would be Vladimir Morozov at 50.26 in 2018, and the percentage difference to Dressel would be a stunning 1.95%. No wonder: Dressel was a full second faster than Morozov in a 100-meter race.
There are two other men’s world records with differences above 1%: Emre Sakci‘s 50 breaststroke and newly minted Noe Ponti‘s 50 butterfly world record from Singapore – he is 0.24 seconds faster than Nyls Korstanje, the second-fastest swimmer ever from that same race. Which, in a 50-meter race, is a considerable margin.
Of course, there are many things to consider in a more detailed analysis. Would Honda’s 200 butterfly world record standalone if Marchand, the Olympic champion, had swum the event in his prime shape? It’s also possible that Honda wouldn’t even be the world record holder. For a more in-depth analysis, we could compare the world record to the average of the top 10 all-time performers, for example. This is the subject of an upcoming article.
I think Ledecky and Walsh are alone in having a WR in an event they only swam once
That Sacki WR is so sus
At least 2 dolphin kicks very clearly on the start, which he wasn’t the first to get away with at all but still
I think it’s a very beatable record however. 2023 Qin gets it for example IMO
I put more stock in records lasting a decade and a half as being more dominant. Cheater suit and all. If your record is learning to drive, that’s pretty dominant.
I think it is a slight disservice to Honda in the last paragraph.
Agreed.
There’s no such similar disclaimer for Douglas 200 breast WR for example where Chikunova doesn’t have the chance to swim SCM in international competition during her peak, all due to circumstances beyond her power
It’s okay to throw shades at Honda and not at Douglas.
gretchen Walsh’s scy 100 fly is 2.3% faster than 2nd all time
Dressel’s 50 free was 4.55% ahead when he went 17.63
But would it be if the rest of the world swam SCY?
It is yards, we are only really comparing to US swimmers and maybe a small sprinkling of others.
There are a pretty significant number of non-US swimmers that have completed in the NCAA system. Certainly more than a small sprinkling. I generally think that the SCY records are faster than the SCM records. The number of SCM records which fell over the months of September and October, when swimmers were not in prime race shape, I think supports my hypothesis.
That’s sort of an issue of the timing of SCM and SCY competitions. SCM is always in the beginning of season as opposed to SCY, which has its biggest competition in March. On the other hand, SCM has, usually, a greater representation of the elite; there were up until Marchand (and Walsh) rewrote the record books, and there are still, quite a few SCY records held by relatively insignificant swimmers (Farris, Conger or Liam Bell for example, but even Lasco or Urlando to an extent), whereas SCM records in the 2010s were broken and held by the likes of Lochte, Hosszu, Sjostrom, C1 – in other words, the absolute best. Which, in my opinion, corrects for the disparity in seasonality,… Read more »
I don’t think there are “insignificant” SCY record holders, there’s just not really an incentive and limited opportunity for the best US SCY swimmers to go after SCM records. With the ISL over, where can elite US short course racers go to compete after the graduate from the NCAA? There’s basically just the World Cup series, and if they aren’t as good in LCM, then they don’t get selected to go to SCM Worlds. This leaves us in situations like leaving Coleman Stewart, the WR holder in the 100 back off the team. Maybe if the NCAA went back to holding championships in SCM every 4 years we would see the swimmers that you mentioned (Bell, Lasco, Urlando) breaking SCM… Read more »
The great SCM swimmers of the 2010s were also great in LCM. We are talking about World champions and Olympic medalists – compared to them, the guys mentioned above are indeed relatively insignificant.
… Read more »And that’s what separates the wheat from the chaff – you can (mostly) only build a stable professional career out of swimming if you make it in LCM. It’s also important to note that SCM isn’t equivalent to SCY. You have more swimming both relatively and absolutely speaking than in SCY, but with the same amount of turns. It’s an in-between land.
Correction: Soni held 200 BR WR at 2:14.57 – it was Douglass that first brought it down to 2:14.16, then to 2:12.57.
Interesting. I’ve been toyng with a similar concept for NCAA records with percentage difference from the cut lines and fastest active non record holder performer to see if there is a correlation that might predict likelihood of a record falling. I think the data is relatively available for NCAAs to let you test the models vs history. Sure some records come out of nowhere but there feels like there are trends with the cuts getting closer to records and the closest active to the record relative to the cuts. Really it’s just a multi variable improvement tend.
I’d also love to have easy access to X number of swims and swimmers under certain times per year to measure event… Read more »
I feel like SwimSwam has done very similar analysis in the past. Comparing Coughlin record to second best time then… Etc