There are 14 individual Olympic swimming events per gender. So far this year, the fastest U.S. woman in nine of them has been either Katie Ledecky (of course) or Claire Curzan.
Ledecky is again dominating the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyles domestically going into the world championships trials from April 26-30 in Greensboro, N.C., where the top two per individual event are in line to make the team for Budapest.
She hasn’t lost to another American in any of those events in eight years.
But the 17-year-old Curzan has Ledecky beat in another way: five 2022 nation-leading times to four. And Curzan has done it across three different strokes.
She continued the climb that started during the early days of the pandemic, when she rattled off personal bests and national age group records off training tethered in a wetsuit in an unheated backyard North Carolina pool.
After placing 10th in her Olympic debut in Tokyo in the 100m butterfly, she won four events at each of the two Pro Series stops so far this year. However, none of her 2022 nation-leading times would have placed in the two at last year’s Olympic Trials. She may need to go faster in Greensboro, her favorite pool, to make waves at trials.
Several top U.S. women have yet to race in an Olympic-size pool this year.
Simone Manuel hasn’t raced at all since the Tokyo Games, and there has been no word on whether she plans to enter world trials.
Then there are the NCAA stars who have competed strictly in short-course yards, including Stanford’s Torri Huske and Regan Smith and Virginia’s Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh.
MORE: U.S. men’s swimming rankings
2022 U.S. Women’s Swimming Rankings50m Freestyle1. Claire Curzan — 24.432. Abbey Weitzeil — 24.73 3. Erika Brown — 24.81 4.
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