Kaylee McKeown — Photo Courtesy: Giorgio Scala / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
by DAVID RIEDER – SENIOR WRITER
30 July 2024, 12:13pm
Paris Olympics, Day 4 Finals: Kaylee McKeown Tops Regan Smith to Repeat as 100 Backstroke Olympic Champion
The first time Kaylee McKeown and Regan Smith raced each other was at the 2017 World Championships, when Smith was 15 years old and McKeown had just turned 16. Neither won a medal that night (Smith actually fell to eighth), but that moment foreshadowed a long backstroking rivalry between the two.
Smith was the first to break a world record, taking down marks in both the 200 back and 100 back at the 2019 Worlds, but McKeown was victorious in both events on the Olympic stage. At last year’s World Championships, the last time the two met prior to the Paris Games, McKeown got the gold in all three backstroke races, all at Smith’s expense. But the U.S. Olympic Trials last month saw Smith fire back, taking down McKeown’s 100 back world record in fiery fashion.
In Paris, McKeown and Smith would surely meet in a pair of gold-medal finals, with the pair considered a virtual lock to occupy the top-two spots in some order. Round one come in the 100-meter race, and accordingly, Smith and McKeown would swim in the center lanes, the American in four and the Australian in five.
And once again, McKeown has come from behind to overtake Smith at a critical juncture, securing her second consecutive Olympic gold in the event.
The race was almost dead even through the halfway point, with Smith and Canada’s Kylie Masse each flipping at 28.02, just eight hundredths shy of world-record pace, but McKeown and the United States’ Katharine Berkoff were just hundredths behind. Off the turn, Smith’s underwater dolphin kicks propelled her ahead, but Berkoff was not done, and neither was McKeown.
In previous major finals matching up the duo, Smith has taken the early lead, only for McKeown to come charging back, but when Smith broke the world record at last month’s Trials, she went out under world-record pace and then fell a mere one hundredth shy of equaling McKeown’s second-length split. This time, McKeown stayed close enough to put herself in position to pull away.
In the final 15 meters, the medals sorted themselves out: Berkoff fell slightly behind, and then so did Smith as McKeown reached to the wall in 57.33. That tied her best time, which had stood as the world record until last month and remains the Australian, Commonwealth and Oceanic records.
Smith took second in 57.66, earning her fourth Olympic medal and third silver, while Berkoff reached the podium with a bronze-medal time of 57.98. Those medals are the 598th and 599th that the United States has ever collected in the pool. Masse, the winner of bronze in the event in 2016 and silver in 2021, came up just shy of reaching the podium for a third consecutive Olympics as she finished fourth in 58.21.
- World Record: Regan Smith, USA – 57.13 (2024)
- Olympic Record: Kaylee McKeown, Australia – 57.47 (2021)
- Tokyo Olympic Champion: Kaylee McKeown, Australia – 57.47
McKeown became only the second woman to defend Olympic gold in the 100 back, following Natalie Coughlin in 2004 and 2008. McKeown was also trying to become only the second Australian woman to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals in an individual swimming race. Ariarne Titmus joined those ranks earlier this week in the 400 freestyle, following Dawn Fraser’s three consecutive 100 free crowns in 1956, 1960 and 1964.
Over the past five years, Smith and McKeown have collectively lifted this event to new heights. The first decade following the ban on full-body polyurethane suits saw tiny drops in the world record, from 58.12 to 58.00, before Smith became the first woman under 58 with a dramatic relay leadoff at the 2019 Worlds. She actually did not swim the 100 back at that meet, but her world-record-setting effort and gold medal in the 200 back at that meet convinced the U.S. coaching staff to give her medley relay duties.
Two years later, McKeown would take that record down to 57.47, and then she went 57.33 last year before Smith achieved the latest global mark at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Three other woman have followed these two under 58 — with Masse and Berkoff in this final while Mollie O’Callaghan skipped the event to focus on her freestyle swims — but entering the Olympic final, McKeown and Smith combined to own the top-15 times in history, nine by McKeown and six from Smith.
Outside the pool, McKeown and Smith rarely see each other since they live on opposite sides of the world, but they maintain a cordial relationship, with Smith revealing prior to the Olympics how McKeown sent her an Instagram message kindly congratulating her on the record. But their year-after-year backstroking excellence has made this competition a staple of major international meets.
And they still have at least two more high-stakes matchups in Paris, in the 200 back and as leadoff swimmers on the women’s 400 medley relay, with the mixed 400 medley relay also a possibility. Here, McKeown got this gold medal, but Smith is not done in Paris yet.
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