Luca Urlando Has Opportunity to Convert 200 Fly Success into Stardom
The last time Luca Urlando posted a performance that set him up as the next American star in the 200 butterfly was six years ago. The then-17-year-old swam a time of 1:53.84 at a Pro Series meet in Clovis, Calif., breaking a National Age Group record belonging to Michael Phelps and making him the third-fastest American ever at the time.
Urlando would not swim another personal-best time in the long course version of the event until this past weekend. Following a record-smashing performance in the 200-yard fly at the recent NCAA Championships, Urlando stayed on the west coast to race at another Pro Series meet, this one held in his hometown of Sacramento. His short course efforts combined with a 100 fly best time set up Urlando’s 200-meter race, and he responded with gusto.
His time was 1:52.37, annihilating that long-standing personal best and making him the fourth-fastest performer ever in the event behind the last three Olympic gold medalists: Hungary’s Kristof Milak, France’s Leon Marchand and American legend Michael Phelps. He easily beat the 1:52.80 that Ilya Kharun swam to win Olympic bronze in Paris. Head-to-head, Urlando defeated Polish swimmer Krzysztof Chmielewski, the 2023 Worlds silver medalist in the event, by two seconds.
Now, the challenge becomes maintaining that level of performance, which circumstances prevented Urlando from doing in 2019, and trying to end an American run of futility in the 200 fly that has spanned almost a decade.
Urlando would not have the opportunity to compete at the World Championships that year, with USA Swimming having already selected its squad one year prior, but no American would eclipse that time for the remainder of the year. Urlando’s time would have been good enough for silver at that year’s global meet in a final where the lone American, Zach Harting, was almost two seconds slower in a sixth-place finish.
Luca Urlando at the 2025 NCAA Championships — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Since then, Urlando’s career has been best known for his stumbles rather than successes. The COVID-19 pandemic and delay of the Tokyo Olympics halted his momentum, and by the time he reached the 2021 Olympic Trials, he could only manage a time of 1:55.43 in the 200 fly final as he missed the Olympic team by nine hundredths. Urlando would also finish third in the 100 fly at that meet, and he gave up a spot in the 200 freestyle final (and a possible 800 free relay berth) to focus on butterfly.
A year later, Urlando would follow up a surprise American record in the 100 backstroke with his first World Championships appearance, where he placed fifth in the 200 fly. But at a World Cup meet that fall in Indianapolis, Urlando suffered a major shoulder injury that knocked him out for the rest of the season. He would not return to competition until late summer, and he initially only raced freestyle in his comeback.
But by the summer of 2024, Urlando would be ready to challenge for a spot on the Olympic team, and this time, he came through. In the semifinals, he swam under 1:55 for the first time in two years to earn lane four in the final. The next night, Urlando jumped from fourth to second on the final length to secure his spot in Paris. Ironically, the swimmer who finished ahead of Urlando was Thomas Heilman, the teenager who had broken Urlando’s 17-18 mark in the 200 fly one year earlier.
Urlando would go one-and-done at his first Olympics, a disappointing time of 1:56.18 leaving him 15-hundredths away from the semifinals, but his ensuing return to the University of Georgia after almost two years away brought instant success. He lowered the NCAA and American records in the 200 fly in January, and at the national meet, he finished third in the 100 fly and won the B-final of the 200 IM before his final-day triumph in his signature event.
Listed as a fifth-year swimmer, Urlando revealed at the conclusion of NCAAs that he still has two years of eligibility remaining thanks to an injury redshirt year, an Olympic redshirt year and the COVID waiver allowing him a fifth full season. With a college career now set to stretch from 2020 until 2027 and the Los Angeles Olympics only one year further down the line, Urlando will have plenty of chances to convert this newfound speed in the 200 fly into international medals.
Of course, that’s a challenge that has proved elusive for American men going back to Phelps’ retirement following the 2016 Olympics. Urlando, Heilman and Carson Foster have all ventured into 1:53-territory (or better), but no one has earned an Olympic medal or a long course World Championships medal in the 200 fly in the past eight years. Moreover, the Paris Games marked rock bottom for U.S. butterfly as no American swimmer advanced to the final of the 100 or 200.
For years, it looked like Urlando’s 1:53 best time was a white whale he may never match, but his renaissance over the past three months have presented a path forward for Urlando to reach the heights he was on track for as a teenager. He has a second chance to become the much-needed American standard-bearer in the 200 fly.
