Gretchen Walsh shattered the world record in the women’s 100-meter butterfly semifinals on Saturday night, the opening night of the U.S. trials.
Gretchen Walsh set a world record in the women's 100-meter butterfly Saturday night, posting a time of 55.18 seconds in a semifinal heat at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials.
Walsh was more than a half-second under world-record pace at the turn and finished strong to eclipse the mark of 55.48 set by Sweden's Sarah Sjöström at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
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She held her hand over her mouth as she looked at the scoreboard in disbelief, a “WR” beside her name.
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The 21-year-old Walsh, a native of Nashville, Tennessee, who competes for the University of Virginia, will return for the finals Sunday night looking to claim a spot on her first Olympic team.
Already making the Paris squad is Katie Ledecky, who secured her fourth trip to the Olympics in the women's 400-meter freestyle.
Cheered on by a crowd of 20,689 at the home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts, Ledecky touched the wall in 3 minutes, 58.35 seconds.
She improved on her time of 3:59.99 in the morning preliminaries and set herself up to make a run at another gold against a loaded field at the Paris Games. Australia's Ariarne Titmus is the defending Olympic champion and world-record holder (3:55.38), with Canadian phenom Summer McIntosh also in the mix.
The 27-year-old Ledecky is set to swim four events at the trials, all of them freestyle events ranging from 200 to 1,500 meters. She already has six individual gold medals — more than any female swimmer in Olympic history.
The expected second spot on the Olympic team will go to Paige Madden, the runner-up behind Ledecky at 4:02.08.
Watch Ledecky's gold medal performance in the 1500m in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics:
