While the entirety of the Olympic Games will be full of the best athletes in the entire world, it’s rare when two of the best in a single event are at the peak of their careers at the same time.

If all goes to plan, the four fastest 100m backstrokers in history will share the lanes at the Paris La Defense Arena on the night of July 30, where the winner will win the much coveted Olympic gold medal.

The women’s 100m backstroke field this year includes three of the last four world record holders in the event and the three fastest of all-time - United States’s Regan Smith, Australia’s Kaylee McKeown and Canada’s Kylie Masse. United States’s Katherine Berkoff, who won bronze at last year’s World Championships behind McKeown and Smith, will also be a factor in this race as the fourth fastest performer all-time

In addition, three of these four have swam lifetime best times in the last 12 months.

The race is going to be fast, and the world record has been set four times by Smith and McKeown the last five years, as those two have pushed this event to unprecedented heights, and the rest of the world is left to catch up.

Creating a New Era

Before Smith first lowered the world record in 2019, Canada’s Masse, who won the World titles in 2017 and 2019, broke the world record in 2017 at 58.10. That year, she broke the 2009 shiny suited record belonging to Gemma Spofforth at 58.12, and since has consistently ranked in the top five in the world each year.

After winning bronze in this event at the 2016 Olympics and silver in 2021, she could become the first Canadian swimmer to win medals at three straight Olympics if she is to reach the podium again in Paris.

“That’s an incredible feat and something I would dream and aspire to do,” Masse told reporters at a press conference while on training camp in Caen, France. “I am focusing on my preparation and it is going well. I am looking forward to giving it my best shot and seeing whatever that is.”

Masse, age 28, dominated the backstroke fields in the Tokyo Olympic quad, developing a reputation as one of the best racers in the entire world. In a stroke that relied a lot on peripheral vision, she kept winning major finals in the 100m backstroke between 2017 and 2019.

Although Masse won the World title in 2019, it was actually a 17-year-old Regan Smith who led the world rankings that year.

Smith became the first woman to break 58 seconds, swimming 57.57 in leading off the 4x100m medley relay on the last day of the 2019 World Aquatics Championships. That swim came two days after she broke the world record in the 200m backstroke at 2:03.35. Seemingly overnight, Smith became one of the faces of the American swim team, winning the 2019 Swimmer of the Year award from Swimming World Magazine. This coveted distinction has been given out every year since 1965.

“When you're 17, and I had not really done much to my name yet, it was very easy,” Smith told reporters at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis. “I had no pressure on me. I was always the youngest. Nobody really expected much out of me, and so it was so easy to walk into races feeling so fearless and not really caring what the outcome was. And I really just shocked myself at that meet in 2019 because I didn't believe I was capable of it.”

Smith struggled to live up to the expectations put upon her leading into the 2020 Olympics, and with an additional year tacked on, she felt the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“I was at my absolutely lowest point confidence-wise,” Smith said of herself in 2021 at those Olympic Trials. “I just didn't want to be there. I wasn't excited. I had no faith in myself. I wanted other people to do it because I thought that they were going to be better off doing it than I was.”

Smith qualified for her first Olympic team in the 100m backstroke and 200m butterfly in 2021, but was third in the 200m backstroke, the event many considered her best.

While Smith had been struggling in the lead-up to Tokyo, it was Australia’s McKeown, who finished second to her at the 2019 Worlds in the 200m, who took her world record off the books at her Olympic Trials, swimming 57.45 just days before her 20th birthday.

McKeown and Smith already had some history together. At the 2017 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest, McKeown, age 16, finished fourth in the 200m backstroke, while Smith, age 15, finished eighth. That year, the pair traded world junior records in the event, but many watching did not expect the two would be set to dominate the stroke in just a few short years.

Leading into the 2021 Olympics, McKeown and Smith were on a collision course towards Tokyo as the two fastest of all-time, while Masse, who was the reigning World champ, also swam a lifetime best at the Canadian Olympic Trials at 57.70.

Game on.

In the preliminaries in Tokyo, Masse, Smith, and McKeown each traded Olympic records three heats in a row, while Smith got the record back in the semi-finals.

In the Olympic final, with all the cards on the line, McKeown used her deadly last 15 meters to win the gold medal at 57.47, as she kept the Olympic record in her name and became the first Australian to win the event at the Games. Masse won silver at 57.72 while Smith won bronze at 58.05.

McKeown went on to win the 200m backstroke as well. After Masse led for 150 meters, McKeown turned it on over the last 50 meters and got to share the podium with one of her mentors in teammate Emily Seebohm, who won that 200m backstroke World title back in McKeown’s debut in 2017.

Go West

After the Olympics, Smith left home and her coach Mike Parratto at the Riptide Swim Team in Minnesota, to go to college at Stanford University to swim for coach Greg Meehan in September 2021.

McKeown had also changed coaches after the Olympics, as her coach Chris Mooney left the Sunshine Coast for a new opportunity at Bond University, while McKeown changed training locations to swim with Michael Bohl at Griffith University.

At the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, Smith and McKeown were poised to go head to head again, but McKeown scratched from the 100m backstroke in favor of the 200m IM, and Smith did not make the team in the 200m backstroke. They each won backstroke World titles in the other’s stead.

After those World Championships in 2022, Smith again changed coaches, this time to swim for Bob Bowman at Arizona State University. The main goal - an Olympic gold medal.

By early 2023, McKeown broke Smith’s world record in the 200m backstroke, lowering it to 2:03.14 as she had officially achieved the treble - Olympic gold, World title, and the world record.

By this time, Smith had been in a little rut with the 200m, having missed out on competing at the 2021 Olympics and 2022 Worlds, finishing third at two straight selection meets. After breaking the world record as a naive high school student in 2019, she didn’t think she’d ever get under 2:04 again.

But Smith had found a groove with Coach Bowman and at the 2023 U.S. Nationals, the selection meet for the World Championships, she was finally able to get under 2:04 for the first time in four years - racing to 2:03.80. It wasn’t a world record, but just seeing a 2:03 again was a win.

At the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Smith and McKeown faced each other three times, their first head-to-head meeting since the Olympics.

McKeown won all three backstroke finals over Smith, with the same movie playing over and over again - Smith leading the race out before McKeown storming home the last 15 meters. McKeown’s success was the first time a woman had won the 50m, 100m, and 200m of the same stroke at the same World Championships, and she credited Smith for pushing her to this unprecedented accomplishment.

“I think it’s a great experience. It definitely brought out my nerves,” McKeown said last summer of racing Smith in three finals in Fukuoka. “Without her pushing me and without me pushing her, we wouldn’t be the swimmers we are today. I am super grateful we have that competitive rivalry. We’ve been racing each other since 2017 when we were both juniors. So it’s gone back way before anyone ever thought so it’s been really special.”

A few weeks after the World Championships in Fukuoka, McKeown travelled to compete in the Budapest World Cup and re-broke her world record in the 100m at 57.33. Two world records in one year allowed her to be named the World Aquatics Swimmer of the Year.

Headed for a Showdown

At her Olympic Trials in June, McKeown rattled her own record of 57.41. Smith’s response? She reclaimed the world record in the 100m backstroke at 57.13. After five years of not going a best time in that event, she had the world record attached to her name again a few weeks before Paris.

Game on… again.

“That was a long time coming and it took a lot of practicing, and improving by confidence with Bob (Bowman) and with Coach Erik (Posegay), and a lot of my teammates, too,” Smith said in her press conference after the world record. “So I knew that I had it in me but for a long time, I didn't, so I'm really, really happy that I finally started to believe in myself.”

Smith has achieved almost everything in this sport - setting world records and winning World titles over the last few years. The only thing missing is an Olympic gold medal. With Smith’s success at her Olympic Trials and her underdog story, she is going to be a sentimental favorite to get to the top of the podium at these Olympics.

On the other side of things is McKeown, who at age 23 is also in the prime of her career. In the 100m backstroke alone, only one woman has ever won back to back gold medals at the Olympics - American Natalie Coughlin in 2004 and 2008. Domestically, only one Australian woman has won back to back Olympic gold medals in the same swimming event - Dawn Fraser in 1956, 1960, and 1964.

McKeown has a real chance at history in 2024.

It may just take a world record to win gold, and the backstrokers in the field are well aware of the greatness that Smith and McKeown possess.

“They have pushed me over the last number of years, and to be up there with them is an honour,” Masse said in her press conference in Caen. “To see them pushing our sport forward and watching the backstroke push forward over the last couple of years has been truly inspiring so I’m looking forward to getting in the pool with them and just giving it my best shot.”

“I think 56 is a possibility, for sure,” Smith said at her Olympic Trials of a potential world record in Paris. “Whether it's me or one of my competitors, who knows. But yeah I'm not going to sell myself short, absolutely not. That was an amazing race, but it wasn't perfect. I know there are things that I can clean up and do better, and I'm going to work towards that.”