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Swimming at the 2024 Summer Olympics – Women's 100-metre breaststroke
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The women's 100-metre breaststroke event at the 2024 Summer Olympics was held from 28 to 29 July 2024 at Paris La Défense Arena, which was converted to a swimming pool for the swimming events.
China's Tang Qianting was the favourite to win, though Lithuania's Rūta Meilutytė, the US's Lilly King, Italy's Benedetta Pilato and South Africa's Tatjana Smith were also in contention to win medals. All except Meilutytė qualified for the final. In the semifinals, national records for Ireland and Belarus were broken.
In the final, Smith won gold with the winning time of 1:05.28. Tang finished second with 1:05.54 and Ireland's Mona McSharry won bronze with 1:05.59, 0.01 seconds ahead of both Pilato and King, who tied for fourth with 1:05.60. McSharry's bronze made her Ireland's first swimming medallist since 1996 and second swimming medallist ever.
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Background
China's Tang Qianting won the event at the 2024 World Championships, and had the fastest qualifying time of 1:04.39. Lithuania's Rūta Meilutytė won the event at the 2023 Championships, where she swam the fastest qualifying time of 1:04.62.[1] She had had a foot surgery in February to fix an injury, which doctors estimated would take around two months to recover from. Retta Race from SwimSwam commented that it "put a question mark" on her form.[2]
The US' Lilly King won the event at the 2016 Olympics, and she had the third fastest qualifying time of 1:04.75,[1] while Italy's Benedetta Pilato won it at the 2022 World Championships, and she had the fourth fastest qualifying time of 1:05.44.[1][3] South Africa's Tatjana Smith finished second at the 2020 Olympics, and she finished second again at the 2023 World Championships.[1]
Both SwimSwam and Swimming World predicted Tang would win gold. SwimSwam predicted Smith would win silver and King would take bronze, while Swimming World predicted it would be the other way around.[1][4]
The event was held at Paris La Défense Arena, which was converted to a swimming pool for the swimming events.[5]
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Qualification
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Each National Olympic Committee (NOC) was permitted to enter a maximum of two qualified athletes in each individual event, but only if both of them had attained the Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT).[6] For this event, the OQT was 1:06.79 seconds. World Aquatics then considered athletes qualifying through universality; NOCs were given one event entry for each gender, which could be used by any athlete regardless of qualification time, providing the spaces had not already been taken by athletes from that nation who had achieved the OQT.[6][3] Finally, the rest of the spaces were filled by athletes who had met the Olympic Consideration Time (OCT), which was 1:07.12 for this event.[6] In total, 23 athletes qualified through achieving the OQT, twelve athletes qualified through universality places and two athletes qualified through achieving the OCT.[3]
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Heats
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Five heats (preliminary rounds) took place on 28 July 2024, starting at 11:27.[a][7] The swimmers with the best 16 times in the heats advanced to the semifinals.[8] Smith qualified with the fastest time of 1:05.00, while Tang, King, Pilato and Meilutytė also all qualified, among others.[9] Israel's Anastasia Gorbenko qualified with the seventh fastest time, but withdrew to focus on her other events at the Games. This opened up the spot for China's Yang Chang, who swam the 17th fastest time, to qualify.[10]
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Semifinals
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Two semifinals took place on 28 July, starting at 21:10.[11] The swimmers with the best eight times in the semifinals advanced to the final.[8] Tang won the first semifinal with the fourth fastest qualifying time of 1:05.83, while Smith won the second semifinal with the fastest qualifying time of 1:05.00. King and Pilato also qualified, though Meilutytė did not. Ireland's Mona McSharry qualified with the second fastest time of 1:05.51, which broke her own Irish record in the event.[12] Neutral Athlete Alina Zmushka swam a time of 1:05.93 to qualify, which broke the Belarusian record.[b][13]
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Final
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The final took place at 21:34 on 29 July.[14] Tang swam the fastest first 50 metres, touching the wall at the end of the first length in 29.94,[15] however Smith overtook her over the second half of the race to win with a time of 1:05.28.[16] Tang finished second with 1:05.54 and McSharry finished third with 1:05.59, 0.01 seconds ahead of both Pilato and King, who tied for fourth with 1:05.60.[15]
McSharry winning the bronze medal made her Ireland's first swimming medallist since 1996 and second Irish swimming medallist ever.[17][18] It was also Ireland's first medal of the Games in any sport.[16] At 27 years old, Smith became the oldest person to win a medal in this event at the Olympics.[19]
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Notes
- All times are Central European Summer Time (UTC+2)
- Russian and Belarusian athletes were only eligible to compete at the Games as Individual Neutral Athletes, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
References
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