American Gretchen Walsh leads continued attack on records at short-course swimming worlds

BUDAPEST – The assault on short-course swimming world records continued on Dec 14, as Gretchen Walsh added two more to take her tally for the week to five, while Jordan Crooks broke one record twice that day, Summer McIntosh claimed her third mark and Noe Ponti his second in Budapest.

Each record brings a US$25,000 (S$33,740) bonus cheque from World Aquatics that Walsh has been accumulating, although one record was with the women’s 4x100m freestyle relay team.

The 21-year-old American opened the evening session by breaking the women’s 100m butterfly world record for the third time at this meet. The previous record holder was Canadian Maggie Mac Neil, who clocked 54.05 seconds in 2022.

In the heats, Walsh set a new mark of 53.24sec, improved it to 52.87sec in the semi-finals and broke the record again in the final in 52.71sec.

“It’s been harder and harder to get through these races, just because it’s been a really long meet,” said Walsh.

“To break it, on the butterfly, it’s something amazing. It’s crazy, and yeah, I’m really happy with it.”

She returned less than an hour later to swim 22.87sec in the women’s 50m freestyle semi-finals to break the record of 22.93sec set in 2017 by Dutch swimmer Ranomi Kromowidjojo.

“Next thing I’m going to do is celebrate and take a little break, and then in January I’m going to get back to training,” she added.

In between, Swiss swimmer Ponti claimed his third title and second record of the week when he won the men’s 100m fly in 47.71sec to shave 0.07sec off the record American Caeleb Dressel set in the same pool in 2020.

“Caeleb is a legend of our sport,” said the 23-year-old Ponti.

“I always looked up to him, so it’s simply special. It’s special to know that I’m as fast as he was, and as he is.”

Canadian McIntosh, 18, then powered to the women’s 400m individual medley in 4min 15.48sec, more than three seconds inside the 2017 mark of 4:18.94 by Spaniard Mireia Belmonte.

Crooks, representing the Cayman Islands, also broke a record set by Dressel in Budapest in 2020 in the men’s 50m free and then broke it again for good measure.

“Happy to be here, happy to have done it one time,” said the 22-year-old Crooks.

“So to break it a second time is something even cooler.”

Dressel’s mark was 20.16sec and Crooks swam 20.08sec in the morning heats and followed it up with 19.90sec in the evening semi-finals and then said he too was a Dressel fan.

“He was kind of the one that made swimming cool for me when I was younger and it was really the way he swam, the way he went about competing... I always found that quite fascinating,” said Crooks. AFP