50 metres Freestyle, Women

Emma McKeon was the defending gold medalist but had only made the Australian team for the 100 metre butterfly. In her absence, the favorites role fell to Sweden’s Sarah Sjöström, the world record holder, set at the 2017 World Championships, who had won the 100 free gold medal only four days before this final. Sjöström won this event at the 2017, 2022, 2023, and 2024 World Championships. Her biggest challenger was expected to be Australia’s Shayna Jack, silver medalist behind Sjöström at the 2023 Worlds. Other medal contenders included Meg Harris (AUS) and American Gretchen Walsh.

In an event often decided by hundredths of a second, the final was not close. Sjöström had the fastest reaction time at 0.61 seconds and won gold over Harris by 0.26 seconds, a huge margin for the event, and the biggest winning margin at the Olympics since 2004, when Inge de Bruijn (NED) took gold by 0.31 seconds. China’s Zhang Yufei was another 0.23 seconds back in third place.

This was the final event of the Paris 2024 women’s swimming programme. Sjöström ended her fifth Olympic Games with six medals, three of them gold, also winning the 100 butterfly in 2016. Many swimmers had won more Olympic medals, but all of Sjöström’s were won in individual events. Among women, only Katie Ledecky, who finished Paris 2024 with 10 individual medals, and Kirsty Coventry (ZIM) and Krisztina Egerszegi (HUN), both with seven, had won more individual Olympic swimming medals.

For Zhang, this was her sixth medal of the Paris 2024 Olympics, with five of them being bronze medals. That was a new Olympic record for the most bronze medals won at any single edition, in any sport, and also gave her an Olympic best for the most medals won at a single Games without winning gold. It gave Zhang 10 Olympic medals in all, after winning two golds and two silvers at Tokyo 2020. She also won six medals and four gold medals at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games.