Pan Pacific Championships, Day 3 Finals: Amid ‘Rocky’ Meet, Regan Smith Pulls Away From Claire Curzan for 200 Back Gold
Puzzling might be the best description for the collection of performances Regan Smith has put together at the Pan Pacific Championships. First came a 100 backstroke performance that she called “not good at all” as she fell behind American teammate Katharine Berkoff with a time nine tenths off her world record.
“I haven’t been 58 at night at an important meet since I was a teenager,” Smith said Wednesday evening. “So I’m just very frustrated.”
The next day, Smith rebounded with a solid silver-medal performance in the 50 back, going 27.14 to finish only four hundredths behind her best time. And then in the prelims of the 200 back, Smith propelled herself to a time of 2:04.13, her fastest performance in more than two years and the second-quickest in the world this year. Where that came from, Smith had no idea, but she was thrilled to exorcise negative feelings lingering from the first day of the meet.
“I just think I have a huge chip on my shoulder. I take so much pride in the 100 back over anything else, so that was just like not the type of swimmer that I like to think that I am. And I’m still me. So yeah, everyone can think what they want to think, say what they want to say, but they can do it from nowhere,” Smith said after her prelims swim. “I thought that was going to be 2:06-something. So it just kind of shows my feel is so weird right now.”
Smith admitted she was unsure if she had more speed waiting in reserve after a qualification swim in which she was under world-record pace for most of the race. Indeed, she swam slower on each split in the evening session, but the 24-year-old American had enough to lead throughout and win her first gold medal of the meet. Narrowly out-splitting U.S. teammate Claire Curzan on each length, Smith raced to a time of 2:05.57.
“Before this morning, I’d never been under 2:06 in prelims, and I went 2:04.1,” Smith said. “That’s my fifth-best time ever. I think that was really a gut check, like, ‘OK, I’ve still got it.’ I woke up from my nap at 4 p.m., and I was like, ‘Oh my god, I still feel it so much.’ That’s not an excuse. It’s just the truth. Tonight was just about coming in and racing as hard as I could.”
Smith called the race “just a gut-check crapshoot because it felt like crap from the get-go, but that doesn’t matter. We race for place at night, especially at Pan Pacs.”
Indeed, this win marked Smith’s first international gold in the long course 200 back since the 2019 World Championships. During each of the previous three years, Smith has captured silver in the 100 and 200-meter races behind Kaylee McKeown at the summer’s major international competitions (Paris Olympics and two World Championships). Smith benefitted here from the absence of an injured McKeown to return to the top spot.
Smith gave herself credit for showing mental toughness as she put aside disappointing races to still come away from Irvine with a solid collection of medals. She will be favored to add one more as the likely backstroke swimmer on the U.S. women’s 400 medley relay.
“I’m extremely frustrated to go through such a long season, do all this hard work just to end on such a blah note,” Smith said. “I really wanted to acknowledge those frustrations but then also be able to move on because if you give into the mental fatigue that you can so easily get, I think that separates champions from non-champions.”
Curzan took silver in 2:06.44, just behind her prelims time of 2:05.97 that made her the fourth-fastest swimmer in the world for 2026. Curzan previously won bronze in this event behind McKeown and Smith at the 2025 World Championships, and she was the gold medalist at the lightly-attended Worlds in February 2024.
“I think I’m pretty happy with the swim,” Curzan said. “I was telling (coach Todd DeSorbo) during warm-ups, I’ve never had to sprint as fast as we have had in the morning. Going 2:05 in the morning, which I’ve never done before, I think was a great milestone for me, and just being able to finish strong tonight is a win.”
China’s Peng Xuwei won bronze in 2:07.45, but the top-four times of the evening all belonged to Americans as Phoebe Bacon (2:07.02) and Rylee Erisman (2:07.20) swam the two quickest marks in the B final.
The world rankings for this year reinforce the story of American dominance. While McKeown still leads with her 2:03.98 from June, but Americans occupy the next four spots with Smith, Isabelle Stadden, Curzan and Maggie Wazenek while Erisman, Bacon and Anna Peplowski also rank among the top-10.
