What Will The Olympic Qualifying Times Be In The Stroke 50s?

With Wednesday’s announcement that the 50 backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly will be added to the event schedule for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, fans are already predicting which swimmers will benefit the most and certain athletes have expressed their excitement about the addition.

Before we get to the Games, one order of business to determine is what the Olympic qualifying times will be in each event. The times used for Olympic qualification have historically been a bit stiffer than the ‘A’ cuts used for the World Championships. For the 2024 Games in Paris, the Olympic qualifying time (OQT) was the 14th-place time from the prelims at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, while the consideration time (OCT) was 0.5% slower.

Although it’s likely the 2025 World Championships will be used as the benchmark to determine the Olympic qualifying times for the stroke 50s in 2028, with the OQTs typically released in the spring two years before the Games (so approximately 12 months from now), we can get a gauge of what they’ll look like using some recent data.

For theoretical purposes, we can use the same criteria to determine what the Olympic qualifying times in each stroke 50 would be using results from the 2023 World Championships, which was the last best-on-best long course international meet that included stroke 50s. (The 2024 World Championships took place in February 2024, but with many of the world’s best swimmers missing.)

• Estimated Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT): 14th-place time from 2023 World Championships
• Estimated Olympic Consideration Time (OCT): 0.5% slower than estimated OQT (rounding up)

WOMEN’S OLYMPIC QUALIFYING ESTIMATES

MEN’S OLYMPIC QUALIFYING ESTIMATES

Looking at the estimated OQTs based on the 2023 World Championship results, we can see how many swimmers would’ve qualified for the Olympics based on times done in the 2024 calendar year—a year where stroke 50s were not a main focus of the majority of swimmers.

Note that this doesn’t take into account the fact that a country can send a maximum of two swimmers in an event to the Games.

• Women 50 back – 32
• Women’s 50 breast – 26
• Women’s 50 fly – 42
• Men’s 50 back – 42
• Men’s 50 breast – 38
• Men’s 50 fly – 36

FASTEST SWIMMER IN EACH STROKE 50 – 2024

• Women 50 back – Kaylee McKeown (AUS), 27.07
• Women’s 50 breast – Ruta Meilutyte (LTU), 29.40
• Women’s 50 fly – Sarah Sjostrom (SWE), 24.63
• Men’s 50 back – Kliment Kolesnikov (RUS), 23.90
• Men’s 50 breast – Sam Williamson (AUS), 26.32
• Men’s 50 fly – Noe Ponti (SUI), 22.65

OLYMPIC QUALIFYING ESTIMATES VS 2025 STANDARDS

We can also take a look at how the theoretical Olympic qualifying times in the stroke 50s compare to what the actual standards are for the 2025 World Championships.

Women’s OQT vs 2025 Worlds ‘A’ Cut

Women’s OCT vs 2025 Worlds ‘B’ Cut

Men’s OQT vs 2025 Worlds ‘A’ Cut

Men’s OCT vs 2025 Worlds ‘B’ Cut

As the numbers show, the automatic qualifying times are almost identical, with all of the 2025 standards only slightly slower than the estimated OQTs, but the big difference is in the consideration/’B’ standards.

That’s due to the fact that, unlike the Olympic consideration times which are 0.5% slower than the OQTs, the ‘B’ cuts for the World Championships are 3.5% slower than the ‘A’ cut.

The ‘A’ cuts for the 2025 Worlds were determined by using the faster of two times, either the ‘A’ cut for the 2023 and 2024 Worlds or, the 16th place time from the preliminary heats fat the 2023 World Championships.