The assault on the record books continued this evening at the 2015 FINA World Aquatics Championships in Kazan, Russia, and to no one’s surprise, Sarah Sjostrom once again contributed to that onslaught.
Sjostrom, swimming for Sweden, had previously broken Dana Vollmer‘s world record in the 100 fly in both the semi-finals and finals earlier this week.
Tonight she turned her attention to the 50 fly, for which she already has the world record. While she was well-off her world record time of 24.43, set at the Swedish Championships this June, tonight’s time of 25.06 put her ahead of fellow Swede Therese Alshammar’s championship record time of 25.07, set at the 2009 Rome World Championships.
While many of the records set in the poly-suit era of 2008 and (especially) 2009 were once considered untouchable, we’ve seen more and more of them go down as time goes on, and Sjostrom and Katie Ledecky of the United States have both played a big role in rewriting the record books.
Sjostrom elected not to swim the 200 free individually here in Kazan, but she led off Sweden’s 4×200 free relay yesterday with a time that would have won gold had she swam, and repeated that time, in the finals of the 200 free earlier this week.
If — or is it when? — Sjostrom breaks her own world record in the 50 fly tomorrow, there will be further debate about which swimmer has had a more impressive world championships performance this week, Sjostorm or Ledecky.
I have to say I was a little bummed out that she didn’t win the 100m free. Would have been awesome to see her come away with Golds in everything she raced. The 50m free will be tough to win as well, but these women are on fire.