by DAVID RIEDER - SENIOR WRITER
Swimming World Magazine
Consider the generations of swimming
that Sarah Sjostrom has spanned. She swam in her first Olympics in 2008, with a
European title already collected, although Sjostrom did not advance out of the
prelims at that meet. She turned 15 on the day competition ended. One year
later, she set her first world records in the 100 butterfly, her 56.44
semifinal mark lowering the nine-year-old mark of Dutch great Inge de Bruijn
and her finals time of 56.06 securing her first world title. That was the meet
where the soon-to-be-banned full-body polyurethane suits helped swimmers lower
a ridiculous 43 world records.
Now, Sjostrom is approaching her 30th
birthday, so she has been a consistent international presence and a household
name among swimming fans for literally half her life. Her leadup to the
rescheduled Tokyo Olympics was rocky after sustaining an elbow injury five
months before competition began, but she returned in time to win Olympic silver
in the 50 freestyle, and from there, she took on an ambitious schedule in the
International Swimming League that culminated in an MVP performance in the
finale.
2022 brought the ninth and 10th
individual long course world titles of Sjostrom’s career plus three more gold
medals at the European Championships. Thanks to those results, she was the
unanimous choice for European Female Swimmer of the Year, her fifth time
receiving that honor. After her major meets of the summer were completed,
Sjostrom revealed she would be taking the rest of the year away from training
and competition but that her long-range plans included the 2028 Olympics, which
would be the Swedish star’s sixth Games.
Her break must have been effective
because Sjostrom is off to an extremely swift start in 2023. Her performances
at last week’s Swim Open Stockholm were lights-out for mid-April, with times of
25.04 in the 50 fly, 23.92 in the 50 free and 52.99 in the 100 free.
Let’s break those times down a little
bit because Sjostrom has made those numbers very routine, particularly in the
one-lap events. Her 50 fly time is a mark that no other swimmer has ever
surpassed, with fellow Swede Therese Alshammar ranking second all-time at
25.07. In 2014, Sjostrom demolished that world record with a time of 24.43, and
since then, she has won four straight world titles in the race. The record for
most consecutive titles is Katie Ledecky’s five in the 800 free, and Sjostrom
will be heavily favored to match that record this year.
Her 50 free time was only a
quarter-second away from her world record of 23.67, set in 2017, and the sub-24
performance was the 20th of Sjostrom’s career. For some perspective, there have
only been 45 different 23-second performances ever, so Sjostrom has posted
almost half of them. And yes, her time was faster than her world-title-winning
performance last year, although she was one hundredth slower than her European
Championships time (23.91).
In the 100 free, she has returned to
51-second territory since setting the current world record of 51.71 leading off
Sweden’s 400 free relay at the 2017 World Championships, but she has captured a
medal in that race at five consecutive World Championships (although never
gold). That will be the toughest of her three main races when she returns to
the global stage in July in Fukuoka, Japan, with competitors such as reigning
world champion Mollie O’Callaghan, Olympic champion Emma McKeon, Olympic silver
medalist Siobhan Haughey and Worlds bronze medalist Torri Huske, but Sjostrom
has already beaten all of them to the first 52-second swim of 2023.
You might notice some events missing
from the above analysis: in particular, the 100 fly, the event in which
Sjostrom broke out onto the international scene almost a decade-and-a-half ago.
She has not competed in the event internationally since Tokyo, when she
exceeded all expectations just by getting herself into the medal mix over the
first two rounds before falling to seventh in the final. Sjostrom still holds
the world record at 55.48, but it would not be surprising if it is broken this
year, with Huske and Maggie Mac Neil among those gunning for the mark.
Sjostrom has also steered clear of
the 200 free recently. She was the Olympic runnerup in that race in an exciting
showdown with Katie Ledecky in 2016, and she won World Championships bronze in
2019, but a return to the event seems unlikely.
These days, Sjostrom usually sticks
to the 50-meter races plus the 100 free, but her medal-winning ways have not
changed. If her most recent in-season swims are any indication, she is on track
for some excellent results this summer, likely her fastest long course times
since the 2017 Worlds, when she won three gold medals for perhaps the finest
single-meet performance of her career. She has won 20 medals at the long course
edition of the World Championships, and when numbers are combined from the
Olympics plus long course and short course global plus continental
championships, Sjostrom has 89 total medals internationally.
It’s been one of the finest careers
of any swimmer in history, and perhaps an underappreciated one given that
Sjostrom has shared the international spotlight with the likes of Ledecky,
Hosszu, McKeon and others. But now, fifteen years after her first international
gold medal, Sjostrom has plans to continue this run a while longer.
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