{"id":601319,"date":"2024-12-10T09:56:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T16:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=601319"},"modified":"2024-12-10T17:12:45","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T00:12:45","slug":"flash-gretchen-walsh-lowers-50-fly-record-first-woman-inside-24-secs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/flash-gretchen-walsh-lowers-50-fly-record-first-woman-inside-24-secs\/","title":{"rendered":"Gretchen Walsh Lowers 50 Butterfly Record; First Woman Inside 24 Seconds"},"content":{"rendered":"

FLASH! Gretchen Walsh Lowers 50 Fly Record; First Woman Inside 24 Secs<\/h4>\n

Gretchen Walsh<\/strong> lowered the 50 fly WR she set in prelims to 23.94 to become the first woman through the 24-second barrier in Budapest.<\/p>\n

The USA athlete went 24.02 in prelims to slice 0.36 from Therese Alshammar’s<\/strong> record that had stood since the supersuited era of 2009.<\/p>\n

Following that, the double Olympic champion set her sights on going through the 24-second barrier and she did just that in the semis at short-course worlds, taking a further 0.08 off that mark.<\/p>\n

It was the second WR of the evening following Summer McIntosh<\/strong> in the 400 free in the first final of the six-day meet.<\/p>\n

After setting a WR in prelims, Walsh took her final exam in Commercial Law before returning to the pool to rewrite her own history.<\/p>\n

“It feels great to go under 24,” said Walsh. “I feel great.\u00a0 I guess that was the new goal after this mornings 24. Swimming under the 24 mark was pretty insane, I am honestly just hoping that I can go faster and keep the streak going.<\/p>\n

“I love setting goals for myself based on barriers I can break.\u00a0I honestly am hoping that I can go faster tomorrow (in the final) and keep the streak going which would be insane.”<\/p>\n

She added: “This morning I was really long into my turn so tonight I just tried to make my strokes longer on the first 25 so I didn\u2019t have so much glide into the wall and I think I did that.\u00a0I think I executed the race better.<\/p>\n

“I really don\u2019t know what I am going to fix going into tomorrow. but we will have to find something.\u00a0Honestly just a best time at this point would be great\u00a0 Going a 22 would be, actually, we are not going to talk about that!<\/p>\n

The first individual gold going into the worlds (championships) is something I never thought would happen anytime soon, so I am looking forward to it. That would be amazing too.”<\/p>\n