Gretchen Walsh, No Longer a ‘Bathtub Swimmer’, Arrives at Her Big Olympic Moment

July 27, 2024

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Bathtub swimmer.

Gretchen Walsh sometimes uses the term her critics once used to tease her, but that’s okay now. She’s shed the label once and for all, and perhaps more importantly, she’s convinced herself she’s more than just a short-course swimmer.

She’s an Olympian. She’s a world record holder. And she has a chance to be the star of the Paris Games.

The insult “bathtub swimmer” implies that a swimmer can only be good if the distances are short and there are lots of walls, meaning you spend about 60 percent of the race underwater. Long course swimming — in those 50-meter pools you see at international competitions like the world championships and the Olympics — is difficult because you spend only about 30 percent of the race underwater. (In both short course and long course swimming, swimmers have to break the surface 15 meters from the wall.)

Generating speed underwater by pushing off walls and using dolphin kicks can be a huge advantage in short-course swimming events like NCAA meets. And Walsh has excelled in that setting, winning seven NCAA titles this season alone and helping the University of Virginia capture its fourth consecutive national team title. She’s also broken four of her own NCAA records along the way.

But she still had to prove herself in the 50-meter pool. And before she could do that, she had to believe she could. Her coach, Todd DeSorbo, believed she could. Her sister and fellow Olympian, Alex, believed she could. Her confidence coach knew Gretchen could do it and had to believe she could do it, too.

“It’s important to listen to people when they have confidence in you and they have confidence in you, and not just let that be a burden on your shoulders,” Gretchen Walsh said. “It took me a while to accept that maybe I’m capable of doing these things.”

Expectations have been high for Walsh since she burst onto the scene as a teenager in Nashville. She qualified for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials at age 13, the youngest competitor in the event. At the 2021 Tokyo Trials, her sister made the Olympic team but didn’t. She finished fifth in the women’s 50-meter freestyle final and didn’t even qualify for the semifinals in the 100-meter freestyle (an event in which she seemed to have a good shot at making the relay). And then, in 2022, she missed out on selection for the U.S. World Championships after finishing third (by a hundredth of a second) in the 50-meter freestyle.

Gretchen Walsh swims in the preliminary round of the 100-meter butterfly on Saturday. She set the two fastest times ever in the event at the U.S. trials. (Jonathan Nackstrand / AFP via Getty Images)

So over the past two years, Walsh and DeSorbo got to work. Part of the problem was mental, because Walsh had to believe she could succeed in the different racing format, but she also had to approach racing a little differently. There were also practical changes she could make to her daily routine.

She got stronger. She tweaked her freestyle technique, making her longer and more powerful, even on the second half of a 100-meter race. Her underwater prowess remained stellar—she’s double-jointed and unnaturally flexible, making her dolphin kicks even more effective—so anything she added above the surface only elevates what she’s been doing underwater at NCAA meets. But DeSorbo split her time, focusing more on long courses in the fall before switching to short courses for the NCAA season. And she made the U.S. roster for the 2023 World Championships, where she won a bronze medal in the 50-meter butterfly and medaled as part of two relays.

“Everyone always says, I’m just a bathtub swimmer, I can’t swim in the long course pool, but I think I’ve finally proven to myself that I can do both,” Walsh said a few months later. “I know I still have a lot to grow in the long course, but now that I’ve (made the world championship team) as Round 1 and gone from there, I’ve taken so many lessons I learned from that meet and put them into my training.”

By the time the U.S. Olympic trials began in June, Walsh knew she would have to make the team as long as she could swim close to what she could. But that didn’t ease the pressure or quiet her internal critics.

A world record indeed.

On the second night of competition in Indianapolis, Walsh broke the world record in the women’s 100-meter butterfly, touching the wall in 55.18 seconds. And it was only the semifinals — a stunning performance, but one that brought new nerves. What if she set a world record but didn’t make the Olympics the next night? What if, what if …

“I had a conversation with my confidence coach and we just said, ‘All I have to do is execute,'” Walsh said. “Nothing more, nothing less. Just execute.”

Gretchen Walsh reacts after swimming a world record at the U.S. Olympic Trials, making her a medal favorite in the 100-meter butterfly, with the final set set for Sunday. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

She did. She hit the top spot in what was now the world’s second-fastest time ever in the event (55.31), making her first Olympic team at age 21. She hugged her sister. She saw DeSorbo crying. “She’s very proud of that,” he said, laughing.

Then Walsh qualified as part of the women’s 100m freestyle relay. Then she added the 50m freestyle to her program in Paris with a second place in the final. The pressure was gone, the doubt was gone.

“For her, it was about getting the monkey off her back,” DeSorbo said. “It took a long time.”

Alex gave the team a few nerve-wracking days after Gretchen clinched a spot, qualified in the women’s 200-meter individual medley and secured a roommate with her sister for Paris. Alex said she was more nervous for Gretchen than she was for herself — that she was more devastated than her sister when Gretchen missed Tokyo, that she was also happier than her sister was for herself this time around.

“It’s a dream come true,” Alex said. “It finally feels like everything is going her way, and rightfully so.”

Gretchen Walsh will be busy this weekend at Paris La Défense Arena as the Olympic swimming program gets underway. On Saturday, she qualified fourth in the 100-meter butterfly preliminary heats, with the semifinals later Saturday and the final on Sunday. The women’s 4×100-meter freestyle relay final is also Saturday night — the U.S. had the second-best time in Saturday morning’s preliminary heats; Walsh did not swim in it, but is expected to swim the final. Next week, Walsh will also compete in the 100-meter freestyle individual event after teammate Kate Douglass dropped that one, and she will also swim the 50-meter freestyle. It’s also likely she will swim the butterfly as part of the women’s medley relay.

That’s a heavy workload, but it feels just right for a swimmer who has shed so much baggage to get here. Gretchen Walsh is ready for her close-up.