2024 Olympics Race Data Breakdown: Men’s 100 Breaststroke

The French governing body for swimming (Fédération Française de Natation) recently released a data analysis booklet of each event raced at the Paris Olympics. In this data-packed guide, information including swimmers’ 25m splits, time spent underwater, total stroke count, and more are laid out in a table with a breakdown of each finalist’s information. Over the next few days, I’ll be choosing some of my favorite races from the Olympics and analyzing the data behind the world’s fastest swimmers.

This data gold mine, all in French, has four distinct sections: Laps (splits), Parties Nagées (Parts of the race swum), Parties Non Nagées (Parts of the race not swum, including the start, underwaters, and finish), and Mouvements (total strokes and such).

LOOKING BACK

The final of the men’s 100 breaststroke was one of the first completed events we got to see, swam on the second day of competition. Italy’s Nicolo Martinenghi won his first Olympic title, touching the wall in a 59.03 to win the race. Adam Peaty and Nic Fink tied for second, only 0.02 seconds behind Martinenghi. This event had one of the biggest time differences between the podiums in Tokyo and Paris, with a 57.37 winning in 2021, and the nearly 2-second gap between the two gold-medal times sparked a lot of discussion about the pool in La Défense Arena hosting a “slow pool.” All eight finalists were seeded within the top 12 in the event, leaving few surprises. The swimmers finished as follows:

1. Nicolo Martinenghi, Italy – 59.03
2. Adam Peaty, Great Britain/Nic Fink, United States – 59.05
3. .
4. Melvin Imoudou, Germany – 59.11
5. Lucas Matzerath, Germany – 59.30
6. Arno Kamminga, Netherlands – 59.32
7. Qin Haiyang, China – 59.50
8. Caspar Corbeau, Netherlands – 59.98

LAPS (SPLITS)

To the 50m mark:

1. Qin – 27.03
2. Peaty – 27.08
3. Martinenghi – 27.34
4. Imoudou – 27.37
5. Fink – 27.45
6. Matzerath – 27.56
7. Corbeau – 27.91
8. Kamminga – 27.94

Closing 50:

1. Kamminga – 31.38
2. Fink – 31.60
3. Martinenghi – 31.69
4. Matzerath/Imoudou – 31.74
5. .
6. Peaty – 31.97
7. Corbeau – 32.07
8. Qin – 32.47

Nicolo Martinenghi seemed to have the most consistent race in this very close field, having the third-fastest split in both the opening and closing 50s but finishing first overall. Adam Peaty and Qin Haiyang both took the first 50 out very quickly, but faded on the way home. Peaty and Qin lay claim to the top 20 fastest performances of all time in this event, but both were far off of their best performances. Nic Fink‘s closing speed helped him to a podium finish, but the American was still a ways off of his best time. Qin and Arno Kamminga switched places as the fastest and slowest swimmers by 50.

PARTIES NAGÉES (PARTS OF THE RACE SWUM)

This section provides the swimmers’ times from 15m to 45m, as well as their times from 65m-95m, accounting for everything except the start, turn, and the finish. The following ranking is their total time spent “swimming.”

1. Imoudou – 37.32
2. Peaty – 37.69
3. Matzerath – 37.85
4. Martinenghi – 37.91
5. Kamminga – 38.02
6. Qin – 38.10
7. Fink – 38.33
8. Corbeau – 38.98

These data points, especially when seen with the next section’s, showcase each breaststroker’s true strengths in the pool. Given these numbers, it’s evident that Caspar Corbeau and Nic Fink rely more on their underwaters and pullouts than the two Germans, Melvin Imoudou and Lucas Matzerath.

PARTIES NON NAGÉES (PARTS OF THE RACE NOT SWUM)

This section highlights the start, turn, and finish of the race, including reaction times, time spent underwater, distance covered underwater, time to hit the 15m mark, closing 5m time, and distance from last stroke into the wall. The following ranking is the total time spent from the start to 15m, 45-65m, and 95m to the wall (measured in seconds).

1. Fink – 20.72
2. Corbeau – 21.00
3. Martinenghi – 21.12
4. Kamminga – 21.30
5. Peaty – 21.36
6. Qin – 21.40
7. Matzerath – 21.45
8. Imoudou – 21.79

Nic Fink was the fastest swimmer to the initial 15m mark, which makes sense given his strong underwaters. He was easily the fastest swimmer in the auxiliary portions of the event, being the only one to spend less than 21 seconds on his start, turns, and finish. Adam Peaty, while having the fastest reaction time of 0.62 seconds, also had the slowest finish, taking his last stroke 1.46m away from the final wall. (Nic Fink had the next furthest final stroke, at 0.99m away)

Qin Haiyang took the longest time to start his breakout off of the initial pullout, going 16.05 meters underwater. For reference, the swimmer with the shortest initial underwater, Lucas Matzerath, only went 13.10 meters until he started his stroke. He was the second swimmer to reach the 15m mark, behind only Nic Fink. Qin also had the second-longest underwater of everyone coming off of the turn, only behind Caspar Corbeau.

Distance spent underwater (including start and turn, in meters):

1. Matzerath – 23.7
2. Imoudou – 24.7
3. Peaty – 25.1
4. Fink – 25.6
5. Kamminga – 26.1
6. Martinenghi – 26.7
7. Corbeau – 27.2
8. Qin – 27.6

MOUVEMENTS (STROKE)

This final section modeled the total strokes that each swimmer took during the race, and the following ranking shows from most strokes to least.

1. Matzerath – 45
2. Martinenghi – 44
3. Peaty – 43
4. Qin – 41
5. Imoudou/Fink – 40
6. .
7. Kamminga – 37
8. Corbeau – 36

Each swimmer added between four and six strokes onto their second 50. Caspar Corbeau took as many strokes coming home as Lucas Matzerath did on his opening 50 (20 strokes), and the two Dutchmen opened up their races taking 16 strokes each, relying more on their glides rather than their tempo. Looking at Kamminga and Corbeau at the lower end of this list, their low stroke rate makes sense given their success as 200 breaststrokers as well. Corbeau was the bronze medalist in the 200 breaststroke at this year’s games, and Kamminga won a silver medal in the 200 in Tokyo. This data point, alongside all of the others, further goes to show that there is not one cut-and-dry way to win a race, especially the 100 breaststroke. Each individual swimmer has their strengths and weaknesses within their event, and many of the best swimmers are those who know how to mitigate their weaknesses. Nicolo Martinenghi didn’t finish any segment the fastest, but his consistency across all segments of the race earned him the title.

For the previous data breakdowns, see the following articles:

• Women’s 50 Free

For the full breakdown: see the booklet here.