Comparing Times: What it Took to Make Semis, Finals & Medal at Worlds Dating Back To ’15

I hope you all like numbers, like a lot of numbers.

SwimSwam has compiled the times that placed 16th in prelims, eighth in the semis (or prelims for events 400+), and won a bronze medal at each long course global competition dating back to the 2015 World Championships in Kazan.

While we did not compare each set of times to one another, we did the math and looked at two key meets. We compared the times from these most recent Worlds (2023) to last year’s (2022), as well as comparing these Worlds to the last World Championships heading into an Olympic year (2019).

The first table here just lists the raw times. If we mistyped any of these times, please let us know in the comments.

A few notes:

• The listed times for 16th and 8th are the times as recorded at the conclusion of the event and do not take into account withdrawals or scratches.
• There was one occasion in 2019 where 18 swimmers made the semi-final due to a backstroke wedge malfunction. The 16th placed time after the re-swim was used to stay consistent with all of the other times listed.
• Ties for 16th or 8th used the tied time, not the swimoff time.
• When no bronze medal was awarded, the time from the tied silver medal was used.
• The bottom two rows with the events 4×100 X Free and X Medley are the mixed relays

The next tables compares the times of 2019 and 2022 to 2023. A few notes regarding the comparison:

• In the time differentials, the numbers under 2019 and 2022 represent the 2023 time subtracted from the 2019 and 2022 time. For example, 16th place in 2023 for the women’s 50 free was 24.89, and in 2019 it was 25.07, resulting in the 2019 time being 0.18 seconds slower.
• Positive numbers mean that 2023’s times were faster and negative mean that the times in 2023 were slower.
• All of these comparisons look at broad trends. One swimmer may lower the World Record and may make the event seem like it is getting faster, but by looking at the 16th/8th/3rd place times, one can see how the field as a whole has improved (or worsened)
• Missing Athletes and/or countries may explain some of the larger time differentials
  • 2022 times are generally slower than those from this year and could be due to more high-caliber athletes using the 2023 Worlds as their end-of-season meet as opposed to last year’s schedule, which saw both the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships held after the World Champs.

Please feel free to note in the comments any conclusions you draw from the times, but here are a few that stand out to me.

• The women’s 400 and 800 have gotten seriously faster.
  • To make the final in the 400 this year, one had to swim 2.12 and 1.46 seconds faster than in 2019 and 2022, respectively. To win bronze, those time differentials were 1.70 and 2.49.
  • The differential in the 800 was even more drastic. One had to go 7.50 and 8.48 seconds quicker than in 2019 and 2022 to final and 2.11 and 5.41 faster to medal.
• Despite seeing new world records in the men’s 50 and 100 backstroke, times across all three distances have been relatively stagnant from 2015 on.
  • In 2015 it took 54.0 and 53.3 to make the 100 back semis and finals, and in 2023, it took 53.9 and 53.2 to make the 100 back semis and finals (compared to the 100 fly, which over the same period went from 52.2 and 51.5 to 51.7 and  51.1).
• In comparing the 2023 Worlds to the 2021 Olympics, the freestyle and IM events times are relatively equal (with some outliers), but in the strokes, times in the 100 and 200 were comparably slower in 2023 than in 2021 (perhaps due to the 50s of stroke being included in the Worlds program).
  • 2021 W 200 Back: 2:11.2/2:08.7/2:06.1 vs. 2023 W 200 Back: 2:11.9/2:09.7/2:06.7
  • 2021 M 200 Breast: 2:09.9/2:08.7/2:07.13 vs. 2023 M 200 Breast: 2:11.7/ 2:09.5/2:07.7