Paris Olympics, Day 6 Semifinals: Phoebe Bacon Takes Top Seed in 200 Back Final Over Kaylee McKeown; Regan Smith Sixth
The backstroke double-double will be on the line Friday evening in Paris as Australia’s Kaylee McKeown seeks to repeat in the 200-meter race three days after pulling away from the field to win 100-meter gold. McKeown set the world record in the 200 back last year at 2:03.14, and she could come close to that mark in the final despite finishing almost three-and-a-half second shy of that mark with her semifinal time of 2:07.57.
If McKeown will be challenged in the final, the two swimmers from the United States will be in best position to do so. McKeown’s main rival in the event is Regan Smith, whose world record she broke and the only other swimmer to ever swim under 2:04. Smith has already taken silver behind McKeown in the 100 back and silver behind Summer McIntosh in the 200 fly. Smith swam the 200 back semis barely an hour after her American-record setting performance in the 200 fly, and she cruised home to a time of 2:08.14, good for the sixth-best qualifying mark.
Finishing first, however, was Phoebe Bacon, the fifth-place finisher in Tokyo and the only swimmer to come close to McKeown in a major final since 2021. Bacon came up just four hundredths behind the Aussie in the 2022 World Championships final, and after missing out on the World Championships team last year, she is well-positioned for a medal run here. She clocked a time of 2:07.32 to win the first-semifinal, which ended up one-quarter of a second ahead of McKeown’s winning mark from heat two.
- World Record: Kaylee McKeown, Australia – 2:03.14 (2023)
- Olympic Record: Missy Franklin, USA – 2:04.06 (2012)
- Tokyo Olympic Champion: Kaylee McKeown, Australia – 2:04.68
Great Britain’s Honey Osrin challenged McKeown at points during their semifinal, and she ended up finishing in 2:07.84 for the third-best time of the evening, two hundredths ahead of China’s Peng Xuwei, the bronze medalist at last year’s World Championships who clocked 2:07.86 here.
Canada’s Kylie Masse, the silver medalist behind McKeown four years ago, came in fifth at 2:07.92, while Great Britain’s Katie Shanahan (2:08.52) and neutral athlete Anastasiya Shkurdai (2:08.79) rounded out the top-eight. Shkurdai, a native of Belarus, is swimming without a national affiliation here because of her country’s support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Notably, the eighth-place time was just a tick quicker than the 2:08.87 required to qualify for the final at the U.S. Olympic Trials last month. Such is American depth in the event that almost every swimmer who raced for a spot on the Olympic team could have made the final here, with several potential medal contenders (including world No. 3 Claire Curzan) left home after Smith and Bacon finished 1-2 at Trials.
