Ranking the World Record Chances for the ISL Playoffs

As the 2020 International Swimming League season moves into its playoff phase this weekend in Budapest, Hungary, beginning with the semi-finals, we’ll see an already-fast season get even faster.

While athletes can’t do a traditional peak-and-taper cycle and still be effective in the rapid-fire ISL format, we did see last year that swimmers were still able to find new best times in the Las Vegas finale with proper preparation.

This means that National Records, which have been getting hammered all season long, and even World Records are on notice heading into this weekend. Keep in mind that, with coronavirus cases spiking in much of North America and Europe as winter comes, for many athletes racing could be hard to come by over the next few months. That means we could see an “all in” mentality to the ISL playoffs.

In season 1, there were 3 World Record breaking swims. Caeleb Dressel got the 50 free with a 20.24 in the Las Vegas finale, Minna Atherton got the 100 back in 54.89 mid-season in this pool in Budapest, and Daiya Seto got the 400 IM in the finale in Las Vegas in 3:54.81. Of that trio, Seto and Atherton are not participants in this year’s ISL season.

Below is our definitive list of which World Records have a chance of being broken this weekend and which don’t. Because all of the Short Course Meters World Records aren’t as familiar and don’t roll off the mind quite as quickly as the long course records might, we’ve also included the full listing of the existing WR in each event.

Men’s World Records

In order of least likely to most likely

• Over Under on men’s World Record broken: 3.5

Not a Chance

There are some good names on this list, including some of the stars of the ISL like Danas Rapsys, Ryan Murphy, and Tom Shields. But in these events, the World Records seem out of reach. Rapsys is swimming well, but his gap to this record is a reminder of how good Yannick Agnel was in his prime.

The men’s 200 IM is, overall, probably the weakest field in the ISL this season. With no Mitch Larkin, Daiya Seto, Jeremy Desplanches, Shun Wang, Chase Kalisz, Qin Haiyang, Ryan Lochte, Caio Pumputis, Laszlo Cseh, or Carson Foster, among others, and with Duncan Scott not performing as well as he did last year, there’s really nobody in this field who seems to have peak-Lochte-in-short-course potential in the 200 IM.

If we were to suspect one of these records to go down, it could be the 200 fly, where Chad le Clos said he wanted to reclaim his World Record from his former Energy Standard teammate Daiya Seto, but he did say ‘in a year or so’ and not ‘in the next couple of weeks.’

Plausible, but don’t bank on it

While Kosuke Hagino’s 400 IM best this season is almost 7 seconds away from that of his countrymate Daiya Seto, who set the World Record in last year’s Las Vegas finale, Hagino feels like he’s getting back to his pre-break form, where he would have challenged the World Record in long course and short course.

With Murphy and Shields all swimming so well, I’d hate to completely omit them from the plausible range. As for Dressel, he hasn’t really shown his full superpowers this season, but if he does get back on form for the semi-finals or finals, then any World Record becomes in range.

World Record Watch

Based on how he started the season, it didn’t seem likely that Kliment Kolesnikov would climb his way into a World Record season, but with his coaches joining the bubble late, the young Russian seems to have been whipped back into shape. At only 20-years old, and just 2 years removed from being one of the best swimmers in the world as a teenager, he’s still clearly young enough to find a few tenths in his 100 backstroke, and his trajectory is lightning.

Given the overall field in the 100 back, with Murphy and Irie and Guido and Diener, it seems like there’s a “winner gets the record” potential here.

Dressel has to be in play for the 50 free World Record, given that he broke it in ISL last year. While Santos and Sakci are within slivers of World Records in their 50s, the 50s can be so dependent on hitting a technical skill perfectly, rather than just quality of training, that to me there’s a higher probability that they’re long into a turn or finish and miss their record targets than there is that Dressel will not find enough form to break the 100 IM World Record.

In fact, I think Dressel, even not at his best, has a 49 in him, given how good he is in this meet.

While the Santos story has been great, at 40-years old swimming near World Record times, at some point there will be a physical limitation to a body that age. Whether he holds out through the finals or not is what we’ll find out.

The one that everybody is eyeballing is Marco Koch, who has been the most open in talking about his quest to break the World Record. He was pulled out of the Breakers’ last meet mid-event with an apparent injury, but reports of that minor injury have been circulating all season long, so I suspect maybe there’s some gamesmanship in play with giving him a lighter race load heading into a 2 week training break before.

Women’s World Records

In order of least likely to most likely

• Over Under on Women’s World Record broken: 2

Not a Chance

The 3 events in which Melanie Margalis currently leads the ISL are huge longshots even with her in attendance. Now that she has gone home early, unless Katinka Hosszu has been playing Sally-Saveup all season, they don’t have a snowball’s chance in a hot place of being broken.

The other longshot is the 200 fly. Just like in long course, this record seems like it could stand for a while in short course.

Plausible, but don’t bank on it

While Wasick isn’t too far off the 50 free World Record (not a sentence I expected to write this season), there are a few reasons to believe she might be maxed out. Remember that she’s about the only female sprinter who isn’t coming out of the 400 free relay to swim this event – the Breakers’ coaching staff have decided that their best option is to slough the 400 free relay and give Wasick a chance to win, and steal points, in this 50 free.

But the Breakers won’t likely make the final, so she pretty much has one shot at this. The two week break going into the semifinals is a counterbalance that works in her favor.

Siobhan Haughey of Energy Standard appears twice on this list. While she has been racing exceedingly well this season, she’s still not all that close to those World Records. It’s also hard to see Lisa Bratton or Beryl Gastaldello as analogous to peak-form Katinka Hosszu, but neither is super far off those records. Perhaps Kylie Masse could make a charge at that 200 backstroke alongside her teammate Bratton, who has been a little better this season.

The 200 breaststroke is the weakest of Lilly King‘s breaststroke races overall, though that gap is narrower in short course than long course. Still, her best swims of the season were early in the year, so she’d have to seriously reverse that trend to get the 200 breaststroke in the semi-finals or the finals.

World Record Watch

Olivia Smoliga, just like we saw from Minna Atherton last year, has been knocking on the door of the sprint backstroke World Records all season long. Frankly, these records felt soft going into last year, and while Atherton’s breakthrough year last season was impressive, she isn’t swimming this year, and they still don’t seem out of Smoliga’s reach.

If Smoliga can just hit a little mini taper before the final, and ride the Cali Condors women’s wave of momentum, she’s got both the 50 and 100 backstroke records in her crosshairs.

Kromowidjojo, meanwhile, is only two-tenths away from the 50 fly World Record. If that event was earlier in the meet, I’d like her chances better. As a day 2 event, that might be enough to scare off that extra tenth she’ll need.