Australian Cameron McEvoy broke the 50m freestyle world record, swimming one length of a pool in 20.88 seconds at the China Open in Shenzhen on Friday.
McEvoy, the 2024 Olympic 50m free gold medalist, went three hundredths of a second faster than the previous record set by Brazilian Cesar Cielo in December 2009, just before the polyurethane suit ban went into effect starting in 2010.
“Ecstatic,” McEvoy said. “I had that target for a very long time.”
With those super suits in 2008 and 2009, a world record was broken in every event that was on the Olympic program except the men’s 1500m freestyle (and the women’s 1500m free, which wasn’t on the Olympic program then but was contested at World Championships).
Now, just six world records remain from 2008 or 2009 out of the 20 men’s events and 20 women’s events that are on the current Olympic program: men’s 200m and 800m frees, 200m backstroke and 4x100m and 4x200m free relays and women’s 200m butterfly.
Since Cielo set that 20.91 world record, the closest any swimmer got to it was Caeleb Dressel’s 21.04 at the 2019 Worlds and the Olympic Trials in 2021. McEvoy won the 2023 Worlds in 21.06.
“I had an insane season of training after the world champs last year,” said the 31-year-old McEvoy. “I was doing some pretty special stuff in training coming into this, so I knew I had a chance to maybe go a PB, maybe go 20.99, but I couldn’t ask for anything better. It’s incredible.”
