U.S. Nationals, Day 3 Finals: Gretchen Walsh Swims Second-Fastest Time Ever in 100 Butterfly at 54.76
The great Gretchen Walsh came very close to pulling off her magic. One month after setting two world records in a day in the 100 butterfly at the Fort Lauderdale Pro Series, Walsh came up just short of that time in a dominant effort at U.S. Nationals. She beat Olympic gold medalist Torri Huske by almost two seconds on the way to the second quickest mark ever recorded.
Walsh was out under world-record pace, turning in a time of 25.19 that only she surpassed in Friday’s 50 fly. However, Walsh’s back half of 29.57 did not quite have the same magic touch as last month. Of course, her final mark of 54.76 was far from shabby: just 16-hundredths behind her record time from last month and more than seven tenths ahead of the existing world record before Walsh started smashing it last June.
“I just think I have that sprint twitch. It’s hard going all-out on the first 50, but if I can hold on, I can usually put up a good time,” Walsh told NBC Sports in a post-race interview. “I feel like my brain envisions people around me so I can race them, but it’s hard to know what I’m going, how fast, because obviously I can’t see a clock, so I just like pushing myself past boundaries I never thought possible.”
Huske finished second in 56.61, just off her season-best time of 56.59 that ranks No. 3 in the world rankings behind Huske and Germany’s Angelina Kohler. Even without approaching her best time of 55.52, which ranks her third all-time, Huske will again be favored for a medal at the upcoming World Championships. In third was Alex Shackell, who clocked 57.71, with no other swimmer cracking 58.
This performance by Walsh follows 10 record-breaking moments all three competition courses in which Walsh has stamped her supremacy in the 100 fly since the start of 2024. Her three records in the long course 100 fly have brought the mark from the 55.48 set by Sarah Sjostrom in 2016 all the way down to 54.60.
In short course yards, the American and U.S. Open records stood at 48.46 when Walsh first began racing the event during her junior season at the University of Virginia. Walsh smashed that record by a second during the 2024 championship season and then knocked off another half-second in March, becoming the first woman to swim a 46.
And in her first-ever major competition in short course meters last December, Walsh smashed the world record in all three rounds. The mark belonged to Maggie Mac Neil at 54.05 at the start of the competition in Budapest, but when the dust settled, Walsh had clocked a time as quick as 52.71.
The one blemish for Walsh during this span was the Olympic final, in which she faded down the stretch as Huske stormed ahead to grab gold. But aside from that race, Walsh has effectively lapped the field and any past performers in the event. Pushing herself forward has required some creativity in goal-setting since there is no precedent or standard-bearer against which she can compare herself.
“I try to see myself and our team as limitless,” Walsh said at the NCAA Championships in March. “These goals don’t need to have any kind of ceiling. If I can keep shooting to be my best and aim for best times, something cool is going to come out of that. But when you have lofty goals, you have to be careful about not being too disappointed. It is definitely a privilege to be able to even speak these goals into existence, whether I achieve them or not.”
Walsh has positioned herself as an enormous favorite for gold entering next month’s World Championships, a whopping 1.82 seconds clear of the rest of the world. She has yet to achieve dominance over the world’s best sprint freestylers in long course, but following with her American-record-setting, world-leading time in the 50 fly Wednesday and then this near-record performance over two laps, no one is close to touching Walsh in sprint butterfly.
