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By David Rieder.
Kylie Masse’s ascendance to the elite level of women’s sprint backstroke was rapid and nothing short of stunning. It was just getting over the world record hump that that took a little bit longer.
Two years after she didn’t qualify for Canada’s top international teams, the World Championships and Pan American Games, Masse showed up to this year’s Canadian Trials in April as the co-Olympic bronze medalist in the women’s 100 back. Going for a spot on her first World Championships team, she promptly put up the third-fastest performance ever in that event and barely missed the world record.
Masse swam a time of 58.21, the fastest 100 back time ever recorded in a textile suit and just nine hundredths off Gemma Spofforth’s eight-year-old global record. She arrived in Budapest as the pre-race favorite, and in the semi-finals, she made another run at the record… only to come even closer but still fall short.
Photo Courtesy: SIPA USA
Masse’s semi-final time was 58.18. Now, she was just six hundredths off the world record. Where could she find that little bit extra?
“It’s just those really small details,” Masse said after her semi-final swim. “The 100 is such a quick race, and the smallest thing can sometimes hinder or improve.”
In the 24 hours between the 100 back semi-finals and final, the world record watch was on.
Spofforth had set her record at the 2009 World Championships in Rome while wearing a suit that contained polyurethane and was soon to be banned. But most of the world records set during the 2009 onslaught have since been broken, and Spofforth’s 100 back was one of just five women’s individual records from that year that remained heading into the World Championships.
Australia’s Emily Seebohm, who at the start of the year owned the fastest-ever time in textile suit at 58.23, was ready for someone to crack the record. After her semi-final swim, she said, “We’ve been close for so long, so it’d be good to see it go.”
Among the others hoping that Masse would make up those last few hundredths: Spofforth, who sent her good luck to Masse on Twitter.
In the final, Masse flipped third at the halfway mark, two tenths behind American Kathleen Baker, and Seebohm was second. But as she pushed towards 25 meters to go, she was pulling even and into the lead.
And then, the superimposed world record line popped up on the video scoreboards inside the Duna Arena. Masse was an arm’s length in front. But as she swam past the 15-meter buoy and towards the flags, the red line was catching her. Her first career World title was all but secured, but would the global mark slip just out of her reach again?
Not this time. She touched the wall in 58.10. After twice missing the mark by the skin of her teeth, she had taken it down by an even smaller margin. As she looked at the scoreboard, Masse could hardly believe what she was seeing.
“I was making sure I was reading the right name, reading the right time,” she said. “I was kind of at a loss of words.”
Before she could digest what had happened, an excited Baker grabbed her into an embrace. Baker was plenty pleased with her silver medal, but she, too, had been hoping to see an old record go down.
“To have Kylie go the world record in my heat is pretty incredible,” Baker said. “That record stood for a while—it’s suit-era—so I think that’s really setting the tone for backstrokers.”
Masse had been trying to keep her mind off the world record and the pressure to break it before the race, but that wasn’t so easy, not when she had twice already come so close.
“I knew I was there, and I knew I was close to it,” she said. “It was a goal, and I was aiming to do that here, but if not, then there’s plenty of other meets next year that I could maybe take a shot at it again. I really just came in with a focus on myself and what I’ve been working on this entire season and just really soaking up the atmosphere here.”
Photo Courtesy: SIPA USA
And she pulled it off. She did it for herself, and she did it for Canada.
Before Masse, no Canadian women had ever won a World title in swimming. The last time a Canadian woman had set a world record: eight years earlier, at those same 2009 World Championships, when Annamay Pierse broke the world record in the 200 breast.
Masse has been a key piece of the renaissance in Canadian women’s swimming, a group which broke a 20-year Olympic medal drought with six podium finishes last year in Rio. Her world record will only expand her legend as the face of swimming in Canada, along with teammate and Olympic gold medalist Penny Oleksiak.
What her efforts have meant for her sport in her country has not been lost on Masse.
“I don’t really know what to say,” she said. “I’m so happy to be here, and to be able to represent Canada is such an honor.”
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Couldn’t pass it by
Congratulations
Historic victory, sounds nice, the world’s best.