With the countdown to Paris 2024 below 365 days, a dozen world records, countless other records, and unprecedented milestones emerged during the last week of competition in Fukuoka 2023, the World Swimming Championships that ended last Sunday that invites us to project an extremely competitive Olympic event.
If there was a protagonist affected by the new improved records, that was the winningest Olympic athlete of all. In addition to narrating live how the strokes of Frenchman Leon Marchand, 21, demolished his last active record, in the combined 400 meters, Michael Phelps can no longer brag about being the top world champion at the individual level because Katie Ledecky reached 16 and surpassed him by one.
Just as Chinese power was reflected in the final medal table of all disciplines, leading it with 20 golds, Australia stood out above the rest in swimming: it finished as the top winner, with 13 first places (six more than the United States), and as the leader in broken records. There were five, half of the total. Three of them won in relay events, in the women’s 4x100 and 4x200 freestyle events and in mixed 4x100 freestyle events.
Two of the four gold medals that Mollie O’Callaghan won in Fukuoka were won in the 100 and 200 meters freestyle, a combination of triumphs that no woman had achieved in the history of the world championships. “I didn’t know that any of them had done it before, it’s incredible,” she said. The second, achieved in 1:52.85, allowed her to surpass the legendary mark of the Italian Federica Pellegrini by 13 hundredths. She also participated in the wins in the 4x100 and 4x200.
Just in the 200 freestyle, 16-year-old Canadian Summer McIntosh swam in 1:53.65, finished third and broke RM Junior. In turn, she left another mark on the 400 Butterfly, in which she was crowned with a new championship record of 4:27.11. The only shadow for the Toronto native was that the Australian Ariarne Titmus snatched the world record in the 400 freestyle, with a time of 3:55.38.
The impact of the Lithuanian multi-champion Ruta Meilutyte was once again huge. This time, because she was the only World Cup athlete to beat RM twice in the same race. In the semifinal, she swam the 50-meter breaststroke at 29.30 and a few hours later, in the final, she swam at 29.16. Sarah Sjostrom was on the verge of a similar feat: she consecrated herself in the 50 meters freestyle in 23.62, just 0.01 above the best historical record she had set in the semi-preview. However, the Swedish woman agreed: “I’m very proud, I’m enjoying it more than ever,” she confessed.
The remaining world record was set by Chinese Qin Haiyang in 200 men’s breaststroke (2:05.48). On the other hand, the only Tunisian Olympic champion in Tokyo 2020, Ahmed Hafnaoui, wrote another unpublished page for his country and continent when he won the 1,500 freestyle, setting a new championship record (14:31.54).
In water polo, the Hungarian men’s team dethroned Spain as world champion by defeating Greece 14-13 in a very tight match and both qualified for Paris 2024. On the women’s side, Spain beat the Netherlands, also by one goal (17-16), and they got their Olympic tickets.
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