The place Gretchen Walsh’s 54.33 Ranks Among the many Best World Records in Swimming Historical past

Gretchen Walsh’s 54.33 world file within the girls’s 100 butterfly, set final Saturday on the Fort Lauderdale Open, was actually astonishing.

The degree of dominance she has displayed within the occasion over the previous few years has been exceptional. After all, she now owns the 13 quickest performances in historical past within the occasion — a distinction often reserved for the best swimmers the game has ever seen.

But past that, what could stand out much more is the hole she has created between herself and the remainder of the sphere.

Sarah Sjostrom’s 55.48 world file, which stood from 2016 to 2024, now seems like a distant reminiscence. So distant that Sjostrom — nonetheless the second-fastest performer in historical past with that swim — now sits 1.35 seconds behind Walsh’s world file. That is a gigantic margin in a 100-meter race.

Walsh’s earlier world file of 54.60 was already overwhelmingly dominant. In phrases of the share hole to the second-fastest performer in historical past, it represented a 1.59% benefit — already the biggest amongst all present world information. Now, that margin has grown to an unimaginable 2.07%.

That places Walsh comfortably forward of the second-largest hole amongst lively world information in lengthy course meters: Adam Peaty’s 56.88 within the males’s 100 breaststroke at 1.40%. On the ladies’s aspect, the closest comparability is Katie Ledecky within the girls’s 1500 freestyle, the place her file stands 1.21% forward of the second-fastest performer ever.

But what does that imply traditionally? Have there been different world information that had been equally — or much more — dominant?

Being greater than 2% quicker than the second-fastest swimmer in historical past is a very uncommon achievement. Very few swimmers have ever reached that degree.

One of them is Peaty himself. When he set his still-standing 56.88 world file within the males’s 100 breaststroke on the 2019 World Aquatics Championships, the second-fastest performer in historical past had been 58.29. In different phrases, Peaty was an astonishing 2.42% quicker.

Another instance is Sjostrom. Her still-standing 24.43 world file within the girls’s 50 butterfly, set in 2014, made her 2.55% quicker than the earlier file holder, fellow Swede Therese Alshammar.

To search for equally dominant performances, my database analysis prolonged again to the late Seventies.

And since then, no world file in swimming has been extra spectacular than the legendary 2:05.96 that Mary T. Meagher posted within the girls’s 200 butterfly on the historic 1981 U.S. National Championships.

Top LCM World Records Ranked by Percentage Gap to the 2nd-Fastest Performer (Since the Late Seventies) – One Entry per Swimmer per Event

Meagher had already been reducing the world file within the occasion since 1979, first with 2:07.01 and later with 2:06.37 — each greater than 2% quicker than the earlier world file of two:09.87 held by East German swimmer Andrea Pollack. By 1981, Pollack nonetheless ranked because the second-fastest performer ever, and Meagher’s 2:05.96 represented a staggering 3.01% benefit — one thing actually extraordinary. Not surprisingly, the efficiency was extensively thought of “Beamonesque” and the file lasted practically 20 years.

Right behind Meagher’s 200 butterfly efficiency comes Meagher herself once more, this time within the 100 butterfly. Her 57.93, additionally set on the 1981 U.S. Nationals, represented a 2.57% benefit over Pollack’s 59.46.

From the 2000s onward, the leaders on this class are Sjostrom within the 50 butterfly, adopted by Inge de Bruijn — additionally within the 50 butterfly — and Peaty. Michael Phelps additionally seems on the checklist along with his 1:52.09 world file within the 200 butterfly on the 2007 World Aquatics Championships. And then comes Gretchen Walsh’s 54.33.

All of this reinforces the magnitude of Walsh’s world file — a efficiency that, statistically talking, belongs among the many most spectacular within the historical past of swimming.

Curiously, not one of the information with gaps above 2% come from the Nineties. Truly excessive world information grew to become extra frequent within the twenty first century. And curiously, none had been set through the supersuit period of 2008 and 2009.