2024 Olympic Games Race Data Breakdown: Women’s 50m Freestyle

The French Swimming Federation (Fédération Française de Natation) recently released a booklet with data analysis on every event at the Paris Olympics. This data-rich guide lists information like swimmers’ 25-meter splits, time spent underwater, total strokes, and more in a table with a breakdown of each finalist’s information. Over the next few days, I’ll be picking some of my favorite events from the Olympics and analyzing the data from the fastest swimmers in the world.

This data goldmine, entirely in French, consists of four distinct sections: Round (divisions), Parties Nagees (swam parts of the race), Parties without Nagees (Parts of the race that are not swum, including start, underwater and finish) and Movements (Total number of strokes and so on).

REVIEW

On the last day of competition, the women’s 50 m freestyle was held and since the men’s 1500 m freestyle and the two medley relays also took place in the same session, it was certainly a competition that we will not soon forget. Sarah Sjostrom won her second gold medal of the competition, Meg Harris swam a time under 24 for the first time in her career and took home silver, and Zhang Yufei won her fourth (of five) bronze medal. Seven of the eight swimmers in this heat were seeded in the top eight before the final, with the exception of Slovenia’s Neza Klancar, who was originally seeded 23rd with a time of 24.70. The women finished in the following order:

1. Sarah Sjostrom (Sweden) – 23.71
2. Meg Harris (Australia) – 23.97
3. Zhang Yufei (China) – 24.20
4. Gretchen Walsh (United States) – 24.21
5. Katarzyna Wasick (Poland) – 24.33
6. Neza Klancar (Slovenia) – 24.35
7. Wu Qingfeng (China) – 24.37
8. Shayna Jack (Australia) – 24.39

ROUND (SPLIT)

Up to the 25m mark:

1. Sjostrom/Walsh – 10.98
2. .
3. Harris/Zhang/Wasick – 11.20
4. .
5. .
6. Jack – 11.14
7. Klancar – 11.28
8. Wu – 11.32

Especially thanks to their excellent underwater shots, Gretchen Walsh tied with the world record holder halfway across the pool, with both swimmers taking less than 11 seconds to reach the middle. What’s odd is that five of these swimmers were tied with one another halfway across the pool (something I’ve never seen even come close to in any other race), which shows just how close the women’s 50m freestyle was between the swimmers in third to eighth place.

PARTIES NAGEES (PARTS OF THE RACE SWAM)

This section lists the swimmers’ times from 15m to 25m, as well as their times from 25m to 45m, taking everything except the start and finish into account. The ranking below is their total time from the 15m mark to the 45m mark.

1. Sjostrom – 15.28
2. Harris – 15.35
3. Zhang – 15.59
4. Klancar – 15,63
5. Wasick – 15.64
6. Wu – 15.65
7. Jack – 15.75
8. Walsh – 15.83

Sarah SjostromHer consistent speed helped her dominate this race. Her consistency in the middle 30 meters as well as her other elements (more on that in the next section) continued to show how she became a world record holder. In contrast, Gretchen WalshThe middle 30m is not her strong suit in the 50m, and that was one of the things that kept her off the podium in this race. More than half a second behind Sjöström’s middle 30m, Walsh used the other 20m to secure fourth place, just a hundredth of a second behind Zhang Yufei. Aside from Walsh, this order is very similar to the finish order, which makes sense since that metric is based on a swimmer’s stroke speed.

PARTIES THAT ARE NOT NAGEES (PARTS OF THE RACE NOT TO SWIM)

This section highlights the starts and finishes of the race, including reaction times, time spent underwater, distance covered underwater, time to reach the 15-meter mark, finishing time for 5 meters, and distance from the last stroke to the wall. The leaderboard below is the total time to the 15-meter mark and the final 5 meters to the wall.

1. Walsh-8.38
2. Sjostrom – 8.43
3. Zhang – 8.61
4. Harris – 8.62
5. Jack – 8.64
6. Wasick – 8.69
7. Klancar/Wu – 8.72
8. .

Sjöström had the fastest reaction time in the field with 0.61 seconds and Gretchen Walsh was the slowest at 0.75. But Walsh’s reaction time was quickly made up for by her underwater swimming as she effortlessly became the first swimmer to reach the 15-meter mark. Walsh was the only person to reach the standard in under six seconds (5.88), the next best being Sarah Sjostrom with exactly six. Meg Harris was the slowest to the starting mark with 6.27 seconds. Neza Klancar and Walsh had the longest underwater times with 15.28 and 15.47 respectively. (Although this mark is above the legal limit, the measurement – “Exit from the gorge” is not where her head appears, but where her breakout is). Katarzyna Wasick spent the shortest time underwater and began her breakout after only 9.47 m, a full six meters before Gretchen Walsh.

Meg Harris had the fastest 5-meter finishing time and also the shortest “Approaching the Wall” (Wall approach – distance from last shot to wall) distance, at 2.35s and 0.28m. Wasick had the longest glide into the wall, at 1.31m – over a meter longer than Harris. Although she was the fastest of the field underwater, Walsh’s speed at the back end was slightly slower than the rest of the field, and she took the longest to touch the wall after 5m (albeit just barely, with a time of 2.50).

MOVEMENTS (STROKE)

In this final section, the total number of strokes each swimmer completed during the race was modeled. The following ranking shows the number of strokes from most to fewest.

1. Wasick – 41
2. Jack/Harris – 40
3. .
4. Wu/Zhang – 39
5. .
6. Sjostrom – 38
7. Clancar – 33
8. Walsh-32

A curious fact in this section is evident in the tiebreaks, as both the Australian and Chinese swimmers required the same number of strokes. Harris and Jack have different coaches, as do Wu and Zhang, so this metric seems to be purely coincidental. The number of strokes seems to directly correlate with the time spent underwater at the start of the race, with Walsh and Klancar requiring by far the fewest strokes and Wasick the most. A small surprise comes from Zhang Yufei who, despite a depth of 13.01 meters (the third deepest in the field), needed almost as many strokes as Wasick, Jack and Wu, who all swam less than 10.75 meters underwater.

The full breakdown can be found in the brochure here.