SwimSwam Pulse: Curzan’s 100 back and Alexy’s 100 free voted top SC Trials records
SwimSwam’s latest Pulse poll asked readers which of six world-record swims at the U.S. Short Course World Championship Trials impressed them most. The three-day meet in Westmont at the end of October produced five records and one tie despite a relatively small field. Claire Curzan’s women’s 100 backstroke won with 39.9 percent of the vote: she clocked 53.92, the first woman under 54 seconds, lowering Regan Smith’s 54.02. Smith had gone that time twice and was the incoming record holder after gold and a world record at the 2024 short-course Worlds, then matching it on last year’s World Cup while beating Kaylee McKeown at two of three stops. Curzan, still competing for Virginia and a two-time NCAA 100 back champion, had barely raced short-course meters in recent years. Her previous best was 55.74 for bronze at the 2022 SC World Championships until 54.94 at a UVA prep meet in mid-October; Smith and McKeown had otherwise dominated the event for more than five years.
Jack Alexy’s men’s 100 free ranked second with 32.5 percent. He swam 44.64, two-tenths under Kyle Chalmers’ 44.84 from 2021, a mark Egor Kornev had matched in Baku on the World Cup. No American man had broken 45 seconds; Alexy’s national record was 45.05 from the 2024 SC Worlds. The drop was the largest since Amaury Leveaux took the record from 45.69 to 45.12 in 2008. Kate Douglass’s 100 free (49.64, down 0.29 or 0.58 percent from her own 49.93) placed third with 12.7 percent, the biggest percentage cut at the meet. Other records included Douglass matching Gretchen Walsh’s two-week-old women’s 50 free, Katharine Berkoff’s 25.21 in the 50 back (Smith’s 25.23 from 2023; Smith skipped the race for the 200 fly), and Van Mathias’s 55.14 in the men’s 100 breast, under Ilya Shymanovich’s 55.28 from 2021.
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