The 50s of backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly will make their Olympic debuts in three year’s time at the Los Angeles 2028 Games.
It had been an ongoing conversation amongst fans of swimming for years - at long last, the 50s of backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly will be on the Olympic swimming programme in Los Angeles 2028. After making their debuts at the World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka 2001, two years after their World Short Course debut in Hong Kong 1999, they will finally be on “the big show.”
41 events are now on the swimming program and sprinters everywhere are excited.
“I am over the moon!” 50m butterfly short course world record holder Gretchen Walsh told World Aquatics. “I look forward to being able to put a greater emphasis on my 50m butterfly throughout the quad, as it is an event that I truly love and have fun doing.
“I think this decision will also inspire others to focus on the 50s of stroke, therefore making the events more competitive and faster overall. While I am not too worried about LA 2028 at the moment, the addition of these events will surely calm my nerves during Trials that summer given my past success in the 50m fly.”
With the sprint events now officially on the program, the focus for many sprinters has shifted.
How will this affect the current landscape of events?
For one, it’s hard to see any events over 200 meters really being affected by this announcement. The swimmers that train for the 200m events do train speed, but rarely do the 50s and 200s intersect in strokes like breaststroke and butterfly.
Kaylee McKeown and Qin Haiyang won the “hat trick” at the World Championships in Fukuoka 2023 - the first athletes to ever win the 50m, 100m, and 200m of the same stroke at the same World Championships.
McKeown started her international career with success in the 200m backstroke, while Qin leaned more towards the 200m breaststroke and 200m IM. With the 50s now being on the Olympic program, it’s still hard to see them dropping the 200s from their lineups, but they may as they get older in their careers.
Will this change how the 100m event finals look? Though the 50m freestyle has been on the World Aquatics Championships program since Madrid 1986 and the Olympic program since Seoul 1988, the 100m freestyle is still considered to be, by many, the blue ribbon event in the sport.
The 100m events will still be points of emphasis for athletes, but the fields may thin out while skewing younger at the same time.
For one, Pan Zhanle and David Popovici were born in 2004 and are the two fastest performers in history in the event while leaning more towards the 200m freestyle than the 50m.
In fact, none of the three medalists from the men’s 100m freestyle in Paris competed in the 50m, and vice versa. On the women’s side, Sarah Sjostrom was the only medalist from the 100m to compete in the 50m, (although needed a lot of persuading to take on the 100m) and vice versa.
It’s entirely possible that the 50m and 100m finals for each stroke will look completely different, but it’ll open the door for a lot of athletes that may have wanted to focus on the 50m but couldn’t.
The 50m events aren’t necessarily “easier” to train for, but they require different focuses. Athletes will still likely swim up to 100 meters for relays, but expect a lot more focus on the 50s moving forward.
“Imagine a young boy that since 9-years-old was dreaming about being an Olympic champion and after 27 years in swimming finally got this opportunity,” 50m butterfly world record holder Andrii Govorov told World Aquatics. Govorov, age 32, hasn’t competed at the Games since Rio 2016, but has had the world record in the 50m butterfly since 2018. “Speed doesn’t age. This is not for comebacks. This is unfinished business.”
The biggest outcome of this announcement is the anticipation that this may encourage more athletes to stay in the sport longer. The 50m podiums have skewed older since the introduction of them in 1999, and rarely do the “young guns” come out on top in the one lap events. (Anthony Ervin is the only Olympic champion younger than 20 in the 50m freestyle when he won at age 19 in Sydney 2000.)
At the recent 2024 Olympics in Paris, the only gold medalists in the pool over 30 years of age were in the 50m freestyle - Sarah Sjostrom and Cameron McEvoy.
The oldest individual Olympic gold medalists in swimming both came from the 50m freestyle - 35-year-old Anthony Ervin won in Rio 2016, and Inge de Bruijn won the one lap in Athens 2004 just three days before her 31st birthday (Sjostrom was thirteen days away from her 31st birthday in winning the 50m in Paris 2024).
The oldest female swimming medalist at the Games was 41-year-old Dara Torres in the 50m freestyle in Beijing 2008.
The statistics show that athletes can stay in the sport longer if they focus on the 50m events, and the events may get faster and faster with this prestige attached to them now, and expect the median age of athletes in the 50s to be the highest of all the events on the program in Los Angeles.
“I believe we’re about to witness a brand new ‘breed’ of swimmers on deck,” Bruno Fratus told World Aquatics, who won the Olympic bronze medal in Tokyo 2020 in the 50m freestyle at age 32. “Now that the 50s are Olympic events, get ready to forget the current world records because these are going down for sure, we’re about to have a 2009 flashback on these sprints.”
The sport and the athletes are going to continue to evolve, and with these events added to the Olympic line-up, the training will get more specific and the times will drop. Sure, the sessions will be longer with more medal ceremonies and more heats and semis, but the athletes will make it interesting. Older swimmers will get their chance at Olympic glory, and there will be no more “what if?” involved in their career trajectories.
Anthony Ervin, who holds the record for oldest Olympic gold medalist in an individual swimming event at age 35, shared his thoughts with World Aquatics.
“An incredible opportunity for World Aquatics, for swimmers around the world, and for the presentation of our sport to the global public. Tick-tock, LA2028 approaches - time to speed up!”
Will we see Ervin’s age record get surpassed in Los Angeles 2028 or in Brisbane 2032? Will we see someone achieve their first Olympic medal in their late 20s? How long before someone can complete the hat trick? The 50’s being added to the program has changed the trajectories for a lot of careers in the sport, and the sport as a whole will benefit from it.
Greg Eggert contributed to this story.