Who Is Gretchen Walsh? 21-Year-Old US Swimming Star That Broke Sarah Sjostrom’s World Record at Olympic Trials

As expected, the US Olympic Team Trials started off with a bang at the Lucas Oil Stadium. And no one could be happier with their performance than the University of Virginia’s Gretchen Walsh. After a stunning morning session in the women’s 100m fly event, Walsh made things even more thrilling at the semis, as she tore through Sarah Sjostrom’s world record.

Walsh, 21, set a new world record at Indianapolis hours ago as she clocked an incredible 55.18 seconds in the women’s 100m butterfly race. With that, Sjostrom’s record now lags behind by a jaw-dropping .30 seconds. “GRETCHEN WALSH WORLD RECORD,” wrote an evidently emphatic-feeling post by the official Team USA account on X.

Considering the fact that Gretchen has racked up most of her achievements in the short-course, her going on to break a world record in the long-course pool makes things all the more exciting to the fans. While she celebrates her latest milestone, here’s a look back on who is the NCAA swimmer and how is she making waves in the pool.

From a high school champ to being an Olympic aspirant: A long journey for Gretchen Walsh

Walsh found her inkling toward swimming at an early age. While still in high school in her native hometown of Nashville, the daughter of Glynis and Robert Walsh was already setting records at the national high school level. Gretchen is currently the National High School Record Holder in the 50 freestyle and 100 freestyle. Along with that, state championships in multiple events also became a regular occurrence in her early career. From there to becoming one of the main driving forces to help the Virginia women’s swimming squad to lift its fourth consecutive NCAA team title, it has been quite the journey for Gretchen, who is looking to make it to her first Olympics.

It wouldn’t be a far-fetched thing to say that swimming runs in the Walsh family. Gretchen’s sister Alexandra is also a decorated swimmer who already boasts an Olympic silver medal in her resume. Taking a cue from the elder sibling, Gretchen turned a lot of heads at the 2023 World Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, where she bagged three medals in three different events. At the 2024 Women’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships as well, Gretchen made waves as she clocked an incredible 47.42 seconds in the 100m fly race. She ultimately walked away from the tournament with a staggering 7 individual national titles.

With setting new records looking like a daily routine for Walsh, even the swimming icon Michael Phelps seems to think Gretchen might go on to make an incredible debut on the grandest stage in Paris in July. Hours after Gretchen’s thrilling display in Indiana, the Baltimore Bullet shared her achievement on Instagram, in a story captioned, “Let’s gooo @gretchenwalsh2!!“.

With the finals of the women’s events still to look forward to, today isn’t the last time fans will witness Gretchen’s prowess by any means. Now, it waits to be seen if she can maintain her momentum for the remainder of the Olympic Trials and get her ticket to Team USA for the first time.