{"id":732049,"date":"2026-06-29T02:05:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/732049\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T02:05:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:05:16","slug":"swimming-world-record-lasts-just-nine-days-as-gretchen-walsh-breaks-50-freestyle-mark-in-rome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/732049\/","title":{"rendered":"Swimming world record lasts just nine days as Gretchen Walsh breaks 50 freestyle mark in Rome"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">ROME (AP) \u2014 American swimmer Gretchen Walsh broke the world record in the women\u2019s 50 meter freestyle on Sunday, just nine days after her training partner Kate Douglass had set a new mark in the sprint distance.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" alt=\"FILE - Gretchen Walsh, of the United States, competes in the women's 50-meter freestyle final...\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HWYPGXTGYJCBFHQP4OSK62U2PM.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"653\" \/>FILE &#8211; Gretchen Walsh, of the United States, competes in the women&#8217;s 50-meter freestyle final at the World Aquatics Championships in Singapore, Aug. 3, 2025.(Lee Jin-man | AP Photo\/Lee Jin-man)<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Walsh clocked 23.55 seconds at the Sette Colli meet in Rome to shave 0.04 seconds off the record\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/kate-douglass-world-record-50-freestyle-ace3ce09f083c8074550daf1f1d33cc7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Douglass set<\/a>\u00a0in Indianapolis on June 19.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden, who held the world record before Douglass, finished second on Sunday in 23.86.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Walsh and Douglass are former teammates at the University of Virginia and still train together. After seeing her mark bested so quickly, Douglass posted a photo of Walsh on Instagram with the text \u201cwas fun while it lasted\u201d and a handshake emoji.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Walsh, who won two relay gold medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics, also holds the short-course world record over 50 meters and the long-course mark in the 100 butterfly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">AP Summer Olympics:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/2024-paris-olympic-games\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/2024-paris-olympic-games<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROME (AP) \u2014 American swimmer Gretchen Walsh broke the world record in the women\u2019s 50 meter freestyle on&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,315182,41811,3,99,42038,21,19,22,20,25,24,315183,32808],"class_list":["post-732049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-american-swimmer","tag-gretchen-walsh","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-swimming","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-womens-50-meter-freestyle","tag-world-record"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}