Gretchen Walsh broke the world record in the 50m freestyle, taking it from training partner Kate Douglass after Douglass broke it nine days ago.
Walsh, who owns the 16 fastest times in history in the 100m butterfly, clocked 23.55 seconds in the 50m free at the Sette Colli meet in Rome on Sunday.
“That was, like, the best race I’ve ever executed,” Walsh said on the Rai broadcast in Italy. “There you go, I guess you get a world record from that.”
RECORDE DEL MONDO DI GRETCHEN WALSH NEI 50 STILE LIBERO IN 23.55, RECORD ITALIANO DI SARA CURTIS 24.09 E RIENTRO MOSTRUOSO DI SARAH SJOSTROEM 23.86 IL MIGLIOR SETTECOLLI DI SEMPRE 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 pic.twitter.com/Xrk0jTNd2H
— pauldeb89 (@pauldeb891) June 28, 2026
She beat Douglass’ record of 23.59 from the Tyr Pro Series meet in Indianapolis on June 19.
Walsh and Douglass are part of the loaded training group at the University of Virginia.
Kate Douglass’ Instagram
Walsh is now the fastest woman in history in the 50m free and the 100m fly, plus on Friday at Sette Colli swam the second-fastest 50m fly in history — eight hundredths off Swede Sarah Sjostrom’s world record.
“I say the more the merrier,” Walsh told SwimSwam. “I’m going to keep trying to break world records in everything because that’s what it takes to be at the level I’m at.”
Over the last two weeks, Walsh lowered her 50m free personal best from 23.91 to 23.55, moving from the joint eighth-fastest woman in history to become No. 1 in the “splash and dash,” the fastest event in the sport.
In Douglass’ world record race in Indianapolis on June 19, Walsh lowered her personal best to 23.78.
When Douglass broke the world record, she became the first American to hold it since Dara Torres in 1986.
Now Walsh is the first American woman to break a long-course world record in two different strokes since Jenny Thompson, who held the 100m free record from 1992-94 and the 100m fly record from 1999-2000.
Walsh is the first American woman to hold long-course world records simultaneously in two different strokes since Tracy Caulkins shared the 200m fly world record and held the 200m and 400m IM records outright in 1978-79.
Walsh, the youngest 2016 Olympic Trials swimmer at age 13, was once labeled by some “a bathtub swimmer,” or somebody who has significantly better results in 25-yard NCAA pools than in 50-meter pools.
Nobody is saying that anymore.
She broke the 100m fly world record for the first of four times at the 2024 Olympic Trials, then took silver in that event at the Paris Games behind countrywoman Torri Huske.
Walsh swept the 50m and 100m flies at the 2025 World Championships for her first individual golds at a major international long-course meet.
With the 50m fly making its Olympic debut in 2028, Walsh could go into the LA Games with a chance to become the fourth American woman to win three individual swimming golds at one Olympics after Debbie Meyer (1968), Janet Evans (1988) and Katie Ledecky (2016).
Marrit Steenbergen lowered Sarah Sjostrom’s world record by three hundredths of a second.
