Sarah Sjostrom Named Swimming World’s European Female Swimmer of the Year
It wasn’t the best year of Sarah Sjostrom’s career—not by a longshot. But it might have been the most meaningful.
After working through the COVID-19 pandemic, then battling back from an elbow injury, the Swedish star knew the Olympics might not go as well as she otherwise would have hoped.
Sjostrom was not at her best in her usual top events, and the frustration was apparent throughout her time in Tokyo. Then everything came together in her final race of the Games. Sjostrom won the silver medal in the 50-meter freestyle and erupted with emotion. The weight from the past couple of years had been lifted, and the joy of reaching the podium at the Olympics simply took over.
Sjostrom, who turned 28 in August after the Games had concluded, was selected as Swimming World’s European Female Swimmer of the Year for the fourth time in her career (2015-17-18-21). In 2017, she also earned women’s World honors.
In an unexpected down year, Europe had only four female medalists at the Tokyo Games: Sjostrom (silver), Denmark’s Pernille Blume (bronze, 50 free), Italy’s Simona Quadarella (bronze, 800 free) and Germany’s Sarah Kohler (bronze, 1500 free). By comparison, in 2012, European women won four gold and 14 medals overall. And the numbers before that: 2008 (6 gold, 12 total medals), 2004 (6/21) and 2000 (8/20). The last time the European women went without a gold medal was nearly 50 years ago at the 1972 Munich Games.
But Sjostrom’s silver felt like gold to her. In the 50, Sjostrom wasn’t even sure how she would do, especially considering how she had performed earlier in the meet because of her elbow injury. Prior to Tokyo, she had won three Olympic medals—gold in the 100 butterfly, silver in the 200 free and bronze in the 100 free—all from 2016 in Rio.
Despite not medaling early in the meet, Sjostrom actually had a stellar swim right from the start in the first finals session. She led off Sweden’s 400 freestyle relay in 52.62, breaking the Olympic record. Then, in the 100 butterfly, she was unable to improve on her prelim time and ended up seventh in the final. A few days later, she finished fifth in the 100 free in what was the fastest field in history for that event.
But there was one race to go – the 50 free. She qualified fourth after prelims and third after semifinals, and then swam a 24.07. It was well off her world record of 23.73, but that did not matter one bit to Sjostrom— she got her medal.
“This is one of my biggest achievements in my career,” Sjostrom said. “I’ve been winning a lot of medals and breaking a lot of world records, but this has been the toughest challenge so far.
“We didn’t know if I would make it all the way to the podium— we were just like, ‘Maybe a final if I can.’ It has been a really hard journey, but it has definitely made me even tougher as an athlete.”