The 10 World Records set at the 2023 World Aquatics Championships last week in Fukuoka, Japan felt like a huge haul. It seemed like a historically-big number that would stand the test against other major meets (aside from, of course, the infamous 2009 World Championships, where new suit technology led to World Records broken in almost every event).
But as it turns out, it wasn’t a historic high – not even close.
According to the World Record database maintained by SwimSwam statistician Daniel Takata Gomes, there have been 25 long course swim meets in history where more FINA/World Aquatics World Records have been broken. That includes the 2015 (11) and 2017 (11) World Championships, plus an equal number at the 2019 World Championships.
2023 World Championships – World Records set:
| Date | Round | Event | Time | Name | Nation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 23 | Final | Women’s 400 metre freestyle | 3:55.38 | Ariarne Titmus |  Australia |
| July 23 | Final | Men’s 400 metre individual medley | 4:02.50 | Léon Marchand |  France |
| July 23 | Final | Women’s 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay | 3:27.96 | Mollie O’Callaghan (52.08) Shayna Jack (51.69) Meg Harris (52.29) Emma McKeon (51.90) |
Australia |
| July 26 | Final | Women’s 200 metre freestyle | 1:52.85 | Mollie O’Callaghan | Australia |
| July 27 | Final | Women’s 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay | 7:37.50 | Mollie O’Callaghan (1:53.66) Shayna Jack (1:55.63) Brianna Throssell (1:55.80) Ariarne Titmus (1:52.42) |
Australia |
| July 28 | Final | Men’s 200 metre breaststroke | 2:05.48 | Qin Haiyang |  China |
| July 29 | Semifinal 2 | Women’s 50 metre freestyle | 23.61 | Sarah Sjöström |  Sweden |
| July 29 | Semifinal 2 | Women’s 50 metre breaststroke | =29.30 | Rūta Meilutytė |  Lithuania |
| July 29 | Final | Mixed 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay | 3:18.83 | Jack Cartwright (48.14) Kyle Chalmers (47.25) Shayna Jack (51.73) Mollie O’Callaghan (51.71) |
Australia |
| July 30 | Final | Women’s 50 metre breaststroke | 29.16 | Rūta Meilutytė | Lithuania |
With $30,000 awarded to each World Record, that meant and additional $300,000 in prize money awarded to swimmers at the meet.
Still, the mark is a huge increase from the just three that were set at the 2022 championships – which with so many other major international meets happening and so many conspicuous absences, was a bit of a wonky affair.
| Rank | Meet | WRs |
| 1 | World Championships Roma, Lazio 2009 | 43 |
| 2 | Olympic Games Montréal, Québec 1976 | 29 |
| 3 | Olympic Games München, Bavaria 1972 | 28 |
| 4 | Olympic Games Beijing 2008 | 25 |
| 5 | World Championships Beograd (Belgrade) 1973 | 18 |
| 6 | European Championships Wien (Vienna) 1974 | 17 |
| 6 | USA Olympic Trials Long Beach, California 1968 | 17 |
| 8 | GDR Olympic Trials Berlin 1976 | 16 |
| 8 | Olympic Games Seoul 1988 | 16 |
| 10 | Olympic Games Sydney, New South Wales 2000 | 15 |
| 10 | World Championships Melbourne, Victoria 2007 | 15 |
| 12 | Olympic Games Tokyo 1964 | 14 |
| 12 | USA Olympic Trials Chicago, Illinois 1972 | 14 |
| 12 | World Championships Barcelona 2003 | 14 |
| 15 | AAU Championships Los Angeles, California 1970 | 13 |
| 15 | Men’s NAAA Championships Los Angeles, California 1961 | 13 |
| 15 | World Championships Berlin 1978 | 13 |
| 18 | Olympic Games Los Angeles, California 1984 | 12 |
| 18 | Pan American Games Winnipeg, Manitoba 1967 | 12 |
| 18 | Pan Pacific Championships Sydney, New South Wales 1999 | 12 |
| 21 | Olympic Games Moskva (Moscow) 1980 | 11 |
| 21 | USA Spring Nationals Austin, Texas 1980 | 11 |
| 21 | USA Summer Nationals Los Altos, California 1964 | 11 |
| 21 | World Championships Budapest 2017 | 11 |
| 21 | World Championships Kazan 2015 | 11 |
| 26 | AAU Championships Lincoln, Nebraska 1966 | 10 |
| 26 | Olympic Games Barcelona 1992 | 10 |
| 26 | USA v GDR Dual Meet Concord, California 1974 | 10 |
| 26 | World Championships Roma, Lazio 1994 | 10 |
| 26 | World Championships Gwangju 2019 | 10 |
| 26 | World Championships Fukuoka 2023 | 10 |
cate campbell—nbc is not the usa… americans love u aussies…enjoy your hard earned success… but it won’t last…ha
Go back to the 1960 Australian Olympic trials/ National Championships in Feb/ March and think you may need to add another entry fairly high up in your rankings.
It is worth checking it was certainly a sensational meet at the time.
Is Molly’s 4 WR at a meet a record?
No. Thorpey broke 4 last time in Fukuoka but I’m pretty sure there have been more than that as well.
Phelps Melbourne ‘07
5
My stats nerd observations …. Be interesting also to compare number of world records to number of events. E.g world champs, at least over the last 20 years or so, have the 50’s for all the events, the mixed relays were a fairly recent editions. The women’s 4×2 relays were a relatively new edition. Whereas none of the 50 except 5 fr are included at the Olympics & even 50 fr was only started to be included in the 1980’s i think. Also perhaps consider number of rounds or chances to set WR..( were there semis etc.). The more rounds the more opportunities to set WR. ..
also 2009 was the year of the super suit-so maybe that needs… Read more »
I’m biased.
So Titmus WR was best
Top 3 male swimmers in the world: 1. Leon Marchand, 2. Qin Haiyang, 3. Ahmed Hafnoui, HM: Kliment Kolesnikov. Top 3 female swimmers in the world: 1. Kaylee Mckeown, 2. Summer McIntosh, 3. Mollie O’Callaghan, HM: Ariarne Titmus
Katie ledecky? Even if she’s not re breaking her records she is more dominant than any of the female swimmers on this list
And Sarah Sjostrom as well…
No Americans set any WR! Is that first in this list?
They’re not a swimming superpower anymore.
I don’t know if you can judged that based on one meet.
Not just any meet.
Pre-Olympic World Championship
This is a dumb comment. We’re usually slower during pre Olympic world championship, we’ll be fine
But “critics” said usa was slow at those Worlds because they picked the team a year earlier. So this year USA Swimming picked it a month out and …….
Now what?
And a lot of them this year is rookie and first timers on international meet and one of them almost won mens 100 free
Yet nobody finds it odd that WRs are constantly going down with no significant change to any element of swimming since 2009? Cyclists at least have gear and aerodynamics as an excuse for outrageous results.
I have often wondered the same myself. Track and field world records are very rare and seem incredibly hard to break, with some still standing from the 1980s.
Track and field world records truly feel like a once-in-a lifetime event, some of us may be dead before some track and field world records are broken. Swimming world records don’t feel the same in terms of magnitude, but that doesn’t make swimming world records not impressive.
Maybe it’s easier to break world records by moving through water than by moving through air?
Feel like swimming has a lot more room for new techniques vs track
Yep, as humans I think we’re much closer to our maximum limit as runners than swimmers. Track improvements recently have in some ways due to better technology with shoes and track.
The volume and depth of competition is immensely higher in track and field. It goes back thousands of years, and butterfly has only been a stroke since the 50s!
Within 100 years, swimming records will probably reach their general peak
Ryan Crouser is someone that is breaking records yearly, but it’s because he’s more efficient and simply larger than previous record holders in the shot put. One day the 6’8 version of him will arrive and smoke 24m or even 25m.
And the show goes on!
The absolute limit of swimming events is probably near, like the 100 free, the most famous of events,
will never drop under 45 seconds.
I agree that there is still some room to improve swimming times with technique, but within a few decades we’ll hit the threshold of what’s humanly possible. Like what was mentioned with track, breaking WRs will become very rare and it’ll take a truly exceptional person physically, mentally, etc. to do it. We’re past the era where someone like Michael Phelps can come in, swim dozens of races spanning multiple events in a single championships, and shatter WRs left and right. The era of the specialist is well underway. Swimming fewer events, better, is going to be the path forward to breaking WRs. Swimming has gotten incredibly competitive, as evidenced by these past world championships!
Swimming is simply becoming more popular. The sport is also just no doubt in a honeymoon period as a whole.
2009 were the super suits so was a total anomaly, 1976 had the east german women drug issue .. so could be argued top 2 years were a result of ‘technology’ that was later deemed problematic. The problem with 2009 is that it meant records were ‘accepted’ but then the suits were banned. But some how the wr were kept. 🤷🏻♂️ (A head scratcher at least f0r me.) inflating the number of records set in 2009 & then negatively impacting the number of records that were set in the years afterwards.
2009 and 1976 were anomalies with a known cause. My point, unlike some people here argue, is that swimming is very mature as a sport and didn’t have much room to grow over the past 20, or even 30 years. There have been no significant changes in technique across all strokes, training or what little there is of technology (suits, goggles, pools…) that can easily explain the constant and quite significant progression not just in WRs, but also records in junior categories. Not buying it. We’re at a point where 1, maybe 2, WR per year would be normal, expected with emergence of some exceptional athlete per generation. And here we’re discussing 10 as nothing to be concerned about.
In… Read more »
I don’t know what you consider to be obvious, but there has been a ton of changes in technique over the last 30 years – and technology, and training methodology. I went to a high school 20 years ago that consistently won Texas big school state titles – and the top swimmers were pushing 16-20k/day for weeks over Christmas break to prepare for 100s and 200s. One guy off that team went to Michigan as a 100/200 freestyler, training 20k/day. I can’t say that definitively ‘nobody,’ but I’m almost positive that very few 100/200 freestylers are doing 20k days anymore.
I also think you’re ignoring the most brutally-obvious answer: track & field has attracted the best athletes for 100 years.… Read more »
Maybe true from a US centric view but certainly not universal with regard to talent field and training even looking at my own experience over 30 years ago.
Normal, and explained by your arguments, is when a 14 y.o. breaks a 1500 record from back in early 70s. Highly suspect is when you have WR falling nearly every year in 100 whatever approaching half a second under the previous.
It’s probably more a case of not wanting to look at the obvious and stopping the party (money flow) while everyone is finally enjoying some recognition. Textbook cycling scenario.