Kate Douglass stunned the swimming community by surpassing Sarah Sjostrom’s women’s 50m freestyle world record at the TYR Pro Swim Series. Her impressive performance garnered a reaction from the legendary swimmer, Katie Ledecky.
On June 19, 2026, at the TYR Pro Swim Series, which took place in Indianapolis, Douglass delivered a staunch performance in the 50m freestyle race. She broke the world record with an impressive time of 23.59 seconds, shaving 0.02 seconds off the previous world record of 23.61 seconds, which was set by Sweden’s Sjostrom at the 2023 World Championships.
With this feat, Douglass became the first American woman to hold the 50m freestyle world record since Dara Torres, who held it from 1983-86. Celebrating the American’s stellar victory, USA Swimming shared a video of her winning moment on Instagram:
Blown away with the 24-year-old’s performance, Ledecky dropped a comment that read:
“🤯🤯🤯”
Douglass narrowly defeated Gretchen Walsh, who finished second after clocking a time of 23.78 seconds, and third place was claimed by Anna Moesch with a personal best of 24.20 seconds. Both Douglass and Walsh surpassed the previous American record of 23.91 seconds, which they had previously shared.
Kate Douglass opened up about breaking the 50m free world record at the TYR Pro Swim Series
After breaking the world record in the 50m freestyle, Kate Douglass spoke to the media in the post-race interview. Making her feelings known about the historic victory in the 50m freestyle, she said that it came to her as a ‘complete shock.’
“I mean, I think just complete shock. Yeah, I obviously did not expect that. Did not expect a world record on 50 free like ever in my life. And so, yeah, I think just doing that here. It was just crazy. And obviously having my teammates next to me was so much fun, too. And Gretchen was just as surprised as I was. And, yeah, it was fun to kind of celebrate together,” said Kate Douglass.
“I mean, he was just like, “Holy,” you know, like he said, I executed that race perfectly and that’s exactly how it felt. Um, we’ve been working a lot on my start and so I think that that’s been getting better and yeah, I think I just nailed the breakout and I just really accelerated towards finish.”
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