With Four First-Time World Record Holders, Let’s Remember Just How Difficult the Feat Truly is
With Katie Ledecky, Gretchen Walsh and Kate Douglass seeming to regularly be on world record pursuits, as well as Canadian sensation Summer McIntosh, it is easy to forget just how incredible a world-record swim can be.
Katharine Berkoff, Jack Alexy, Van Mathias and Claire Curzan got to experience that feeling for the very first time this week at the 2026 USA Swimming Short Course World Championship Trials in Westmont, Illinois.
World records are a little more common in SCM because they are not swum as often, but to have four new world record holders – with one day of the meet to go – is incredible.
Berkoff, Alexy and Curzan have been big names in the sport for several years, while Mathias and his mustache have burst onto the scene a little more unexpectedly, though not any more.
There is something beyond special that comes with joining the list of the very few swimmers who have broken world records.
It is a fewer number than Olympians and even fewer than the number of gold medals won at the Olympic Games.
It takes a near perfect race and, especially in the U.S., overtaking others who also might be swimming a near-perfect race.
Berkoff has been a masterful backstroker, especially in the shorter distances. But the backstroke events have Regan Smith and Australia’s Kaylee McKeown taking up most of those records.
Now Berkoff has the 50 back SCM mark after beating Curzan, Olivia Smoliga and Isabelle Stadden.
The same can be said for Curzan, who earned the 100 back SCM world record.
When Curzan swam the world record, she was in a heat with the American record-holder (Smith), the world record holder in the 50 back (Berkoff), the defending U.S. national champion (Stadden) and Curzan herself the defending NCAA champion.
That is an awful lot of power in one race.
Of course that is what we have come to expect from an event that has seen Olympic and world championship medals won by the likes of Natalie Coughlin, Missy Franklin, Smoliga, Kathleen Baker, Beth Botsford, Margaret Hoelzer and a slew of big names over the years.
Alexy also had that packed field to earn his first individual world record, having to hold off Caeleb Dressel, Chris Guiliano and fellow Bears Gabriel Jett and Destin Lasco.
He had to beat the best head-to-head to earn the world record.
Mathias didn’t have the same stacked fields as the other races, but crushed the 100 breaststroke world record.
Records will fall, and Alexy, Berkoff, Curzan and Mathias will see theirs fall at some point.
But they will forever be linked in the ultra elite group of swimmers who have been on top of the history of the world, even if just for a short time.
