Gretchen Walsh swims through the Girls’s 100 butterfly semifinals warmth Saturday, June 15, 2024, on the US Swimming Olympic Trials in Indianapolis. (AP Photograph/Darron Cummings)
INDIANAPOLIS — Gretchen Walsh set a world report within the girls’s 100-meter butterfly Saturday night time, posting a time of 55.18 seconds in a semifinal warmth on the U.S. Olympic swimming trials.
Walsh was greater than a half-second beneath world-record tempo on the flip and held on to eclipse the mark of 55.48 set by Sweden’s Sarah Sjöström on the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
“I positively was feeling it,” mentioned Walsh, who considers herself a stronger swimmer within the short-course pool. “I assumed I used to be dying. I didn’t know I used to be going that quick and, apparently, I took it out too quick.”
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To not fear. Walsh held her left hand over her mouth as she regarded on the scoreboard in disbelief, a “WR” beside her title.
“There was a bit of little bit of a buzz on the market,” she mentioned. “I believe going into tonight, like I knew it could take a (55) point-4 or I assume point-5, however I didn’t suppose I used to be going to do it tonight. I simply knew I wished to go a quick time and now right here I’m — a world-record holder.”
The 21-year-old Walsh, a local of Nashville, Tennessee, who competes for the College of Virginia, nonetheless has some work to do to assert a spot on her first Olympic group.
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Within the remaining Sunday night time, she’s going to face a powerful discipline that features Torri Huske, Regan Smith and Claire Curzan — all of them medalists from the Tokyo Video games.
However Walsh feels she will go even quicker.
“I nonetheless have room to develop in that race,” she mentioned.
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