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Gretchen Walsh Hops Over Manuel To Become 2nd Fastest 15-16 U.S. 100 Freestyler

7TH FINA WORLD JUNIOR SWIMMING CHAMPIONSHIPS 2019

  • 50-Meter Course
  • Duna Arena, Budapest (Hungary)
  • Pool swimming: Tuesday, August 20 – Sunday, August 25, 2019
  • Heats 9:30am GMT+2 (3:30 am EDT / 12:30 am PDT)/ Semifinals and Finals 5:30pm GMT+2 (11:30am EDT / 8:30am PDT)
  • Meet site
  • Entries book
  • FinaTV Live Stream (subscription required)
  • Live results

16-year-old Gretchen Walsh dipped under the 54-second threshold in the women’s freestyle for the first time in her young career en route to World Junior Championships gold.

After hitting a semi-final time of 54.25 last night to establish herself as the top swimmer in Budapest, the American fired off a monster new personal best mark of 53.74 to take the gold in the only sub-54 second outing of the entire field.

Walsh’s previous personal best entering this competition was the 54.13 she clocked at this summer’s U.S. Nationals. Flash forward to tonight’s swim, however, and the Nashville Aquatics Club star crushed that to pieces, winning the 100m free here in Budapest by .80. The next closest competitor was USA teammate Torri Huske who put up a super solid time of 54.54, just .02 off her own lifetime best. Australia’s Meg Harris touched in 54.58 for bronze.

Here is a comparison of Walsh’s 54.13 previous PB against her wicked-fast 53.74 from tonight:

25.83/28.30 = 54.13

25.57/28.17 = 53.74

With her swim, Walsh inches closer to Olympic icon Missy Franklin‘s National Age Record of 53.63 set back at the 2011 U.S. Nationals, now sitting just .11 away. But, Walsh did overtake Olympic champion in this event, Simone Manuel‘s PB from this age group of 53.86 that was ranked #2 behind Franklin.

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Swimfan
5 years ago

11 more months till trials, could the women have 4 under 53 in the same race????

TheRoboticRichardSimmons
5 years ago

Is anyone familiar with her training or her stroke technique? Her stroke strikes me as pretty raw. I saw some underwater video of her in the 100 at Nationals and she was dropping her right elbow on her catch pretty noticeably.

The Ready Room
Reply to  TheRoboticRichardSimmons
5 years ago

Looks like her race as a whole could be cleaned up a lot. My intuition tells me that touching up her stroke/race strategy and putting on a little muscle could possibly yield a 52-low a couple years down the line.

Tea rex
5 years ago

HOT FIRE 🌶

Yozhik
5 years ago

0.11 seconds difference at that speed is almost a foot difference in distance.
You can say that Manuel was inches closer to the world record. It will be also a correct statement.

Barry
Reply to  Yozhik
5 years ago

Alternatively, she’s within 8 inches now whereas before this meet she was nearly three feet behind.

Yozhik
Reply to  Barry
5 years ago

At least 10. Swimmers are faster than 2m/sec at very finish. But you are right if it is less than foot we are measuring by inches.

Jjran
Reply to  Yozhik
5 years ago

Nope

The Original Tim
5 years ago

Fantastic swim by Gretchen and awesome to see NAC producing swimming greats again!

Luigi
5 years ago

A pure talent, destined to great things

Yozhik
Reply to  Luigi
5 years ago

It may be the most difficult thing to predict future swimming career of 16 years old talent.
Missy Franklin: 16yo – 53.6 and then only 53.3
Penny Oleksiak:16 yo – 52.7 and never under 53 since then
Sarah Sjostrom: 16 yo – 54.0 and then 51.7

Smith-King-Dahlia-Manuel
Reply to  Yozhik
5 years ago

The vote downs seem to pile up.

Gen D
Reply to  Yozhik
5 years ago

Penny Oleksiak went 52.9 in the finals at World Champs in Budapest but no, hasn’t been close to that individually since. Although, with a 52.00 relay split, it can only lead us to wonder what she could have done had she not scratched the 100 free individually last month…!

DeSorbo Effect
Reply to  Luigi
5 years ago

Somewhere up in Charlottesville I can picture Coach DeSorbo already wearing a huge grin on his face! Chances are he could end up boasting the no. 1 women’s recruiting class of 2021 to complement no. 1 for 2019 & 2020! Go Hoos!

Ol' Longhorn
Reply to  DeSorbo Effect
5 years ago

If he’s grinning ear to ear, that’s a serious grin.

OfficialDad
Reply to  DeSorbo Effect
5 years ago

Amazing that the #2 finisher was Torri Huske, the top Virginia girl in the class of ‘21. DeSorbo is grinning indeed.

Luigi
Reply to  Luigi
5 years ago

Yes, predicting is difficult and perhaps unwise, yet I’ll take my chances

Swimmer
5 years ago

Awesome! When is she 17?

Ger
Reply to  Swimmer
5 years ago

January 2020

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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