Marrit Steenbergen of the Netherlands broke the world record in the 100m freestyle at the Sette Colli swim meet in Rome on Saturday.
Steenbergen, the two-time reigning world champion, clocked 51.68 seconds, taking three hundredths off Swede Sarah Sjostrom’s world record from 2017.
“It sounds so weird that it’s me,” Steenbergen said on the Rai broadcast in Italy. “It’s something I really wished, but one time I didn’t think I was ever going to get that.”
It’s the second time in as many weeks that a Sjostrom world record was broken. Last week, American Kate Douglass broke Sjostrom’s world record in the 50m free.
Steenbergen, 26, was previously the second-fastest 100m freestyler in history, having swum 51.86 last month. American Anna Moesch is the third-fastest woman in history, clocking 51.94 in May.
Steenbergen is preparing for the European Championships in Paris, while the world’s top non-European swimmers prep for the Pan Pacific Championships in Irvine, California, also in August.
Steenbergen was seventh in the 100m free at the 2024 Paris Games in her third Olympic appearance.
Moesch didn’t make the Pan Pac team based on results last year but could swim at the U.S. Championships a month from now.
Steenbergen is the first Dutch woman to break a world record in an individual event that’s on the Olympic program since Marleen Veldhuis in the 50m butterfly in 2009.
The last Dutch woman to break the 100m free world record was Inge de Bruijn at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
