{"id":449476,"date":"2020-10-15T16:34:21","date_gmt":"2020-10-15T23:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=449476"},"modified":"2020-10-15T16:34:21","modified_gmt":"2020-10-15T23:34:21","slug":"swim-poll-of-the-week-52-believe-an-individual-world-record-will-fall-by-end-of-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/swim-poll-of-the-week-52-believe-an-individual-world-record-will-fall-by-end-of-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Swim Poll of the Week: 52% Believe an Individual World Record Will Fall By End of Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the Swim Poll of the Week for Thursday October 15, 2020, sponsored by Strechcordz Swim Training Products<\/a>. In our last poll, we wanted to know: Do you believe an individual world record will fall by the end of the year<\/strong>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We posed the question earlier this summer\u00a0if 2020 would be the first year since 1896 that no swimming world records would fall<\/a>. Through 10 months, it almost came true, until China\u2019s team of\u00a0Xu Jiayu<\/strong>,\u00a0Yan Zibei<\/strong>,\u00a0Zhang Yufei\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Yang Junxuan\u00a0<\/strong>took down the mixed medley relay world record last week at the Chinese National swimming championships in Qingdao.<\/p>\n

But with one world record down, are any individual records in threat of falling over the next two months?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve almost seen a couple. Italy\u2019s\u00a0Gregorio Paltrinieri\u00a0<\/strong>shocked the world with a\u00a0personal best time in the 1500 at the Sette Colli in Rome<\/a>, just missing\u00a0Sun Yang\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>8-year-old world record of 14:31. Paltrinieri was under Sun\u2019s world record pace through 1450 meters before being unable to match Sun\u2019s finishing kick, but nonetheless swimming the second fastest time ever with a 14:33.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, China\u2019s Zhang Yufei moved up to second all-time in the 100 butterfly<\/a>, narrowly missing\u00a0Sarah Sjostrom\u2019s\u00a0<\/strong>mark from the Rio Olympics, as she became the fourth swimmer to join the sub-56 club in that event.<\/p>\n

2020 has been a year unlike any other, with the COVID-19 pandemic causing the Olympic Games to be pushed back a whole year to 2021. With no Olympics, and no real opportunities to race because of social distancing laws that made it difficult to find training opportunities, let alone racing opportunities, the days went by, and the world record books remained untouched.<\/p>\n

Some\u00a0national age group records in the U.S. fell<\/a>\u00a0to those that were able to stay in shape and find racing opportunities. Some countries as well saw their\u00a0national records fall<\/a>, whether they were done in a sanctioned meet or just\u00a0unofficially off the blocks at practice<\/a>. But still, we have approached the month of October, and only one world record has fallen.<\/p>\n

Are any individual records vulnerable to get broken this year? After China\u2019s somewhat surprising mixed relay world record earlier this week (they were disqualified in the heats at the 2019 Worlds), it is certainly a possibility. But with so many swimmers in different levels of fitness, it is difficult to predict just who exactly could be the first individual to set a world record.<\/p>\n