Katharine Berkoff and Regan Smith gave the U.S. its first one-two of the 2025 World Swimming Championships, topping the 50m backstroke, an event that makes its Olympic debut in 2028.
In other finals Thursday, Canada’s Summer McIntosh (200m butterfly), France’s Léon Marchand (200m individual medley) and Romania’s David Popovici (100m freestyle) swam the second-fastest times in history.
Australia captured the women’s 4x200m free relay. Katie Ledecky anchored a silver-medal team to an American record, bagging her 29th career World Championships medal (second only to Michael Phelps’ 33).
Berkoff earned her first individual world title, clocking 27.08 seconds, overtaking Smith by 17 hundredths.
SWIMMING WORLDS: Results | Broadcast Schedule
“It took me a really long time to see the scoreboard because I can’t read that far away,” Berkoff, who won four prior Olympic or world silver or bronze backstroke medals, said on Peacock.
Smith also took silver in the 200m fly an hour before the 50m back final.
It’s the first U.S. one-two at swimming worlds since 2023, when Kate Douglass and Alex Walsh (200m individual medley) and Hunter Armstrong and Justin Ress (50m back) did so.
Australian Kaylee McKeown, who won every backstroke title at the last two Olympics and at the 2023 Worlds, opted not to swim the 50m this year. She owns the world record of 26.86.
Back in April, it was announced that the 50m events in backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly were added to the Olympic program for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. Those events have been held at worlds since 2001.
Summer McIntosh closer to matching Michael Phelps
Also Thursday, McIntosh nearly broke the oldest women’s swimming world record en route to her third gold of the meet.
McIntosh, an 18-year-old Canadian, won the 200m fly in 2:01.99 — just .18 off the world record set by China’s Liu Zige in October 2009. It’s the last women’s world record remaining from the high-tech swimsuit era of 2008-09.
“My coach and I, our big goal was to break that world record,” McIntosh said, according to World Aquatics. “It’s what I’ve been training for. To see that I missed it by that little, and I know that I messed up the last 15 meters of my race … Overall, happy with the time and a PB, but I didn’t reach my goal tonight.”
McIntosh won Thursday’s race by three seconds over Smith. It’s the largest margin of victory in that event since the first World Championships in 1973 when East German Rosemarie Kother-Gabriel prevailed by 3.01.
Australia’s Elizabeth Dekkers held off 12-year-old Yu Zidi of China for bronze by 31 hundredths. Yu, the youngest finalist in worlds history, also took fourth in the 200m IM.
Nobody had swum within two seconds of Liu’s record since she set it until McIntosh won Paris Olympic gold in 2:03.03 — still 1.22 seconds off Liu, though. Then last month, McIntosh went 2:02.26 at the Canadian trials.
McIntosh won the 200m and 400m IMs and the 200m fly at the Paris Olympics, then claimed the 400m free and 200m IM at worlds earlier this week.
She has two individual events left at these worlds in a bid to become the second swimmer to win five individual golds at a single edition after Phelps.
First is Saturday’s final in the 800m free — where McIntosh is the second-fastest swimmer in history behind Ledecky, who is 10-0 in global finals in the event dating to 2010 (Olympics and worlds). Their head-to-head showdown is the most anticipated race of the meet.
In the 400m IM, on the last day of the meet on Sunday, McIntosh is 10.3 seconds faster than the world’s second-fastest woman this year.
Léon Marchand broke the 200m individual world record for the second consecutive day, claiming his third world title in the event.
Leon Marchand wins 200m IM in No. 2 time in history
France’s Marchand followed his world record in the 200m IM in Wednesday’s semifinals by winning the world title in the event in the second-best time in history.
He clocked 1:53.68, one day after going 1:52.69 to break American Ryan Lochte’s world record of 1:54.00 set at the 2011 World Championships.
“I felt so excited yesterday that I couldn’t sleep, so I was enjoying the moment, too, yesterday a lot,” Marchand said, according to World Aquatics. “So I think I lost a lot of energy yesterday night.”
American Shaine Casas took silver in 1:54.30, becoming the fourth-fastest man in history behind his training partner Marchand, Lochte and Phelps.
Marchand, who won four individual gold medals at the Paris Olympics, will bid to sweep the medleys at worlds for a third time with the 400m IM on the meet’s last day Sunday. He dropped his other Olympic gold medal events from his world program — the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke — to concentrate on the medleys.
Popovici swam 46.51 to complete a sweep of the 100m and 200m frees, just as he did in 2022. Popovici reportedly considered withdrawing from worlds last week.
Jack Alexy took his second world 100m free silver medal after clocking the two fastest times in American history between the semis and final (46.81, then 46.92).
China’s Pan Zhanle, who holds the world record of 46.40, was 10th in Wednesday’s semifinals, missing the eight-man final.
Worlds continue through Sunday with preliminary heats at 10 p.m. ET and finals at 7 a.m., live on Peacock.
Friday’s finals are expected to feature Paris Olympic gold medalist Douglass in the 200m breaststroke.
