Walsh won the Fort Lauderdale Open in Florida in 54.33 seconds, setting his own world record of 54.60 seconds.
Published May 3, 2026
American swimmer Gretchen Walsh broke her own world record for the fourth time in the women’s 100m butterfly with a time of 54.33 seconds at the Fort Lauderdale Open in Florida, USA.
Walsh on Saturday shaved 27-100ths of a second off the previous world record of 54.60 seconds, set in the same pool at a professional swimming event last May. She broke the record twice in one day at last year’s competition and has now broken the record four times.
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Walsh, who won three world titles in Singapore last year, is more than a second ahead of Sweden’s Sarah Sjöström, the second-fastest woman in the event’s history, with a best time of 55.48 seconds.
She was more than four seconds faster than world junior record holder Claire Curzan, who clocked silver in 58.44 seconds, and more than two seconds faster than this season’s world record.
Walsh currently holds more than a third of the sub-56-second times in the event’s history.
The 23-year-old joked on social media shortly after completing the feat about making the world record an “annual tradition.”
“I couldn’t be more grateful to WR, the crowd, and the pool,” she said in an Instagram post.
French Olympic hero Leon Marchand won two titles, taking his total to four this week.
On Saturday, the four-time Olympic gold medalist won the 200-meter breaststroke in a season-best time of 2:09.04, followed by winning the 200-meter individual medley in 1:57.28.
Hubert Koss of Hungary, who trains with Marchand in Texas under Michael Phelps’ former coach Bob Bowman, tied for second in the medley with Carson Foster, both touching in a time of 1:57.95.
As he prepares for the European Championships, which begin in Paris on July 31, Marchand used the early games of the season to test himself in a tournament with which he is less familiar.
But in Fort Lauderdale, the 23-year-old opted for the same race program that won him four gold medals at the 2024 Paris Games.
Katie Ledecky opened the women’s 800m freestyle with a time of 8:12.66, finishing more than 30 seconds ahead of Katie Grimes’ 8:40.80.
Ledecky, the most medal-winning female swimmer in history with 14 Olympic medals, was just shy of her season-best time of 8:08.57, set in March.
