Races Without Favorites: Maggie Mac Neil, Torri Huske Poised for 100 Fly World Title Clash

Maggie Mac Neil -- Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Races Without Favorites: Maggie Mac Neil, Torri Huske Poised for 100 Fly World Title Clash

Less than two months out from the World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, several individual races already have clearly-established favorites, but plenty of others lack an obvious choice for gold. Most countries have already competed their selection meets for Worlds while the world’s two premier swimming powers, Australia and the United States, have meets scheduled for next month. So it’s a great time to examine the status quo in several of the events lacking a centerpiece star right now.

Previous entries: women’s 200 individual medley, women’s 400 freestyle, men’s 100 breaststroke, women’s 100 and 200 breaststroke and men’s 50 freestyle. Up next is the women’s 100 butterfly.

In her first World Championships final, Maggie Mac Neil was in fifth place at the halfway point of the 100 butterfly, but she used a stunning finishing burst, her final 50 meters almost a second quicker than anyone else in the field, to come over the top of world-record holder and three-time defending champion Sarah Sjostrom. Two years later, in a star-laden Olympic final of the 100 fly, Mac Neil came out on top to secure gold in an extremely tight finish.

The top five swimmers in history were racing in that final, and Mac Neil touched a mere five hundredths clear of Chinese silver medalist Zhang Yufei. Less than a tenth further back, Australia’s Emma McKeon touched out American Torri Huske for bronze. The top four swimmers all cleared Mac Neil’s winning time from the previous World Championships.

But at the next major championship meet, the deck was cleared. McKeon skipped the 2022 World Championships, and Mac Neil only competed on relays. Sjostrom chose to skip the 100 fly to focus on the 50 fly and the sprint freestyle events. Zhang was in the race but not close to her Olympic form. That left Huske all alone as the clear winner of the 100 fly, her time of 55.64 beating everyone else in the race by a half-second and establishing a new American record.

Now, pending the results of the upcoming Australian Swimming Trials and U.S. Nationals, the same four standouts from the Olympic final will reassemble next month in Fukuoka, Japan, to determine supremacy in the event, and we can include France’s Marie Wattel among the primary contenders after she took silver last year in Budapest in 56.14, moving her to ninth on the all-time list.

In recent months, the 100 fly has been the setting of a pair of high-profile performances in different formats: first, Mac Neil captured the short course world title in the event last December in world-record time, knocking more than a half-second off Kelsi Dahlia’s previous mark while finishing seven tenths ahead of Huske. Next, Kate Douglass edged out Mac Neil by five hundredths to win the 100-yard fly at the NCAA Championships, with both women swimming faster than the existing NCAA record and Huske becoming the third woman ever to break 49 in her quietly impressive third-place finish.

As for long course, Zhang leads the current 2023 world rankings with her 56.48 from China’s National Championships in May, and Mac Neil ranks second at 56.54, a time recorded at the Canadian Trials in late March. The next three spots on the world rankings list belong to Americans, and as is the case in most women’s events these days, any U.S. swimmer who swims fast enough to qualify for the World Championships will automatically be a medal contender.

The top American so far this year is Regan Smith at 56.60, followed by Gretchen Walsh (56.73) and Huske (56.84). Smith has been on fire in all of her events this year, with recent impressive efforts in the 200 IM, the backstroke events and the 200 fly (an American record), so we’ll see if the 100 fly fits into her lineup at Nationals. Walsh, on the other hand, would be foolish to surrender a chance at making noise in the 100 fly as she pushes for her first senior-level international team.

We cannot forget about Claire Curzan, who has been relatively quiet in recent months but placed fifth in the 100 fly at Worlds last year. She currently ranks 11th in the world at 57.26. Her best time of 56.20 ranks 10th all-time. As for Douglass, her butterfly is better short course than long course, and she will have a full schedule at Nationals between the sprint freestyle races, the 200 breaststroke and 200 IM, but she is certainly capable of producing a big swim here. She took third in the event at the 2021 Olympic Trials, her time of 56.56 leaving her just 13 hundredths behind runnerup Curzan. Her season best of 57.13 is currently ninth in the world.

Sweden’s Louise Hansson, China’s Wang Yichun and Germany’s Angelina Kohler all rank in the global top-10 right now with 57-low performances, although we can expect the world rankings to go through some upheaval between this week’s Australian Trials (McKeon and Brianna Throssell) and French Elite Championships (Wattel) plus the American qualifying meet two weeks later.

With the final countdown to Worlds already underway, we can expect to see numerous contenders duking it out for spots in the final and then on the podium, but even without a clear favorite right now, it looks like anyone hoping to win gold will have to go through Mac Neil, the Olympic champion, and Huske, the defending world champion. No one has been able to match these two in the ability of performing in big spots. And the world record, the 55.48 that Sjostrom set back in 2016, will surely come under threat.

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