2023 World Champs Previews: Battle of the Last 2 Record Holders in the Women’s 200 Back

2023 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

• July 23 – 30, 2023 (pool swimming)
• Fukuoka, Japan
• Marine Messe Fukuoka
• LCM (50m)
• Meet Central

BY THE NUMBERS — Women’s 200m Back

• World Record: Kaylee McKeown, Australia, 2:03.14 (2023)
• World Junior Record: Regan Smith, USA, 2:03.35 (2019)
• Championship Record: Regan Smith, USA, 2:03.35 (2019)
• 2022 World Champion: Kaylee McKeown, Australia, 2:05.08

A resurgent Regan Smith looks more like the teen who broke a surprise World Record in 2019 this year. (photo: Jack Spitser)

A much ‘cleaner’ race than the women’s 100 backstroke, this 200 backstroke is more-or-less a head-to-head between the Australian Kaylee McKeown and the American Regan Smith.

McKeown enters with the World Record of 2:03.14 from a non-championship meet, while Smith comes to the competition with a best of 2:03.80 from US Trials.

Much has been made about Smith’s change of coaching this season, moving from Stanford and Greg Meehan to Arizona State and Bob Bowman, along with change of circumstance, going from the rigors of an elite academic institution to a full-time pro swimmer.

But what has been less-spoken of is McKeown’s coaching change. After dealing with some shoulder injuries last year (she still won this 200 back at Worlds), she joined the group of Michael Bohl. While she was at a better place than Smith pre-move, it was not dissimilar, as she joined a hot pro group in her country under a coach with decades of experience training swimmers at the top level.

Like Smith, she has the potential for a very busy lineup in Fukuoka.

And like Smith, she showed some monster swims even before Australia’s June Trials meet.

Between the two, there’s not a wrong pick. But history shows that McKeown is going to be very difficult to beat in this race (she’s the defending World Champion in long course, in short course, and the defending Olympic Champion).

Yes, McKeown didn’t swim great at Worlds last year in the 200 back, going just 2:05.08. But that was still enough for gold. She was 2:05.60 at the Commonwealth Games – again, not her best, but good enough for gold anyway.

Will 2:05 be enough this year? Almost certainly not with the momentum that Smith has. But will she be faster this year? Almost certainly.

Neither pick would be wrong, but all signs right now point to McKeown as the favorite. I think by Paris, it will be closer to a dead heat, but for now, McKeown has the leg up.

Battle for Bronze

Rhyan White won bronze last year and looks like a safe bet to finish in the same spot in 2023. (photo: Jack Spitser)

The battle for 3rd place looks, on paper, even less muddled than the battle for 2nd place. The 2022 Worlds bronze medalist Rhyan White comes in seeded at 2:05.13, which is about two seconds ahead of the next-best seed, Peng Xuwei of China.

With China eyeing a home Asian Games later in the year that carries a lot of weight domestically, there’s no reason to believe that she can close that massive gap on White, even though Peng, only 20, is much more on an upward trajectory. She actually hasn’t been a best time in this event since 2017, when she swam 2:06.55 at just 14 years old. She had a good swim at Short Course Worlds though, so it’s possible we’ll see her back on that 2:06-low or even 2:05-high form this year, it’s just not clear that it will be at this meet.

Remember that White, like Smith and McKeown, has also recently undergone a coaching change, joining an NC State squad that has had a lot of success with backstrokers. Given that she finished the collegiate academic year at Alabama, it’s still pretty early to propose that she could close the gap to the 2:03s, but maybe for Paris there’s some smoke there.

Part of the reason for that gap is the fact that the four swimmers behind her in this year’s World Rankings are all absent from the meet: Americans Claire Curzan, Kennedy Noble, and Phoebe Bacon were odd-women out at the US Trials, and 7th-ranked Anastasiya Shkurdai swims for Belarus, which is barred from competing at the meet.

Next on that list after Peng is the reliable Canadian Kylie Masse, who swam 2:07.13 at Canadian Trials.

While we can’t count her out, because she has a bunch of 2:05s on her resume, that 2:07.13 from Trials is the best she has swum since the Tokyo Olympics, and while she’s had good tapers in prior years, it will be tough for her to find the two seconds needed to get on the podium here.

Margherita Panziera (above) and Kylie Masse come into the meet in similar positions. (Courtesy of Andrea Staccioli Deepbluemedia)

Italy’s Margherita Panziera, 28, is in a similar situation. She has an identical season best of 2:07.13, but beaked at 2:05.5 in the Olympic year and hasn’t been back since.

Other Considerations

• British teenager Katie Shanahan, who just turned 19 in June, is on a big upward trajectory. She’s already dropped 1.4 seconds in the calendar year 2023 and over two in the last 12 months. With a lot of veterans between her and the medals right now, the 8th seed has a chance to begin to close that gap toward the medals for Paris 2024.
• Eszter Szabo Feltothy dropped almost as second in April to go 2:08.85 and earn a spot on the Hungarian team. She also was just 2:11.22 in her last outing at Sette Colli. A young swimmer at 21, she’ll have to rest in a hurry to fight her way into a final here. Barring any late scratches, she’ll have the draft or the pressure of swimming next to the World Record holder McKeown in prelims – depending on how she reacts. She did manage to wrestle a spot on the Hungarian team away from last year’s 7th place finisher Dora Molnar, who is the only finalist from last year who isn’t returning for this year’s race (she is swimming the 100 back).
• Huntary’s other A-finalist from last year, 8th-place finisher Katalin Burian, is back this year for another go. It’s been a few years since she’s been close to a best time, though, and a faster field this year probably blocks her out of the final.
• The 200 back is not the specialty event for France’s Emma Terebo, but it is the one in which she’s shown the most improvement recently. Prior to 2022, she didn’t have any serious times in the event. Last year, she went 2:11.16, and at French Trials in June, she swam 2:09.35. This will be her only race of the meet.
• It took 2:10.0 to make the final in this event last year. This year, 30-35 women globally have already been better than that, and 15 are seeded faster at Worlds.

SwimSwam Predictions

Darkhorse Pick: Lee Eun-ji of South Korea was going 2:09s in the 200 backstroke at age 14 in the leadup to the Olympic Games, and was part of the pack of youngsters that has led the country back into the global conversation alongside swimmers like Hwang Sunwoo and Lee Hoo-Jun. Her trajectory has stalled a bit, entering the meet with a seed time of 2:11.76. In spite of that, she has certainly shown the raw talent to be consistently in A-finals, and at just 16-years-old, it’s not time to write her out of the conversations just yet.