Gretchen Walsh barely missed making the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team in Tokyo, but she made up for it at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, winning four medals. Gretchen had a lot of naysayers from outside of the United States. College swimming fans knew Gretchen was on a rapid rise after her 2024 NCAA DI Championships performance, arguably the greatest in history. International critics cried that her yards dominance would not translate into Olympic meters success.
In this interview Gretchen reveals that she was well-aware of her critics, merely another layer of stress on the run-up to Paris. She breaks down the difference between World Champs and Olympic stage pressure, and she recaps her entire Olympic schedule event by event. Looking ahead to LA2028, Gretchen has big goals, and one of them is to swim a 54 100 meter butterfly.
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Opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the interviewed guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the hosts, SwimSwam Partners, LLC and/or SwimSwam advertising partners.
This is a Gold Medal Media production presented by SwimOutlet.com. Host Gold Medal Mel Stewart is a 3-time Olympic medalist and the co-founder of SwimSwam.com, a Swimming News website.
Why are her arms like that when she does butterfly? They like bend backwards… it wasn’t like that in march…
here’s the article for the picture in march:
https://staging.swimswam.com/2024-w-ncaa-previews-walsh-has-a-grip-on-title-texas-flexes-fly-depth-in-race-for-2nd/
The pictures are from different parts of the stroke
What the analysis of OT vs Olympics performance is missing is the slow pool factor. Definitely believe both she and Torri would’ve been below the 100 fly WR in a normal fast pool, and Gretchen’s 100 free would’ve been a PR as well.
GW needs to drop .19 to go 54 in the 100 fly…feel like there are two scenarios, 1. she does it in next couple years. 2. she doesn’t break and is retired before LA
for record, I think she will go 54 before the end of 2025
Doesn’t seem likely to me that she retires by age 25. I’m going with option #1.
PS– I still watch that WR race and cut onions. The hell?!!
it was amazing to be there and makes me so excited for 2028
Did you catch how damn HAPPY she was after the mixed medley won the gold? No one was happier than her. She is hungry. Watch out!
…truth
Beloved swim coach dies [27 comments]
G. Walsh wants to go :54 [27 comments]
Just because you don’t comment doesn’t mean you don’t care
Who cares – move on and enjoy fast swimming!
let’s get one with Alex now!
What a great teammate with Huske.