The men's 100 metre backstroke event at the 2024 Summer Olympics was held from 28 to 29 July 2024 at Paris La Défense Arena, which was converted to a swimming pool for the swimming events.[1] Since an Olympic size swimming pool is 50 metres long, this race consisted of two lengths of the pool.
Italy's Thomas Ceccon, the USA's Ryan Murphy, and Hunter Armstrong, also of the USA, were the favourites going into the event. Ceccon ended up winning with at time of 52.00 seconds, ahead of China's Xu Jiayu in second and Murphy in third. His win gave Italy their first gold medal in the event.
Each National Olympic Committee (NOC) was permitted to enter a maximum of two qualified athletes in each individual event, but only if both of them had attained the Olympic Qualifying Time (OQT).[10] For this event, the OQT was 53.74 seconds. World Aquatics then considered athletes qualifying through universality; NOCs were given one event entry for each gender, which could be used by any athlete regardless of qualification time, providing the spaces had not already been taken by athletes from that nation who had achieved the OQT.[10][11] Finally, the rest of the spaces were filled by athletes who had met the Olympic Consideration Time (OCT), which was 54.01 for this event.[10] In total, 30 athletes qualified through achieving the OQT, 14 athletes qualified through universality places and two athletes qualified through achieving the OCT.[11]
Heats
Six heats took place on 28 July 2024, starting at 11:43.[12][c] The swimmers with the best 16 times in the heats advanced to the semifinals.[13]Hungary's Hubert Kós swam the fastest qualifying time of 52.78, which broke his own national record.[14]
Two semifinals took place on 28 July, starting at 21:32.[15] The swimmers with the best eight times in the semifinals advanced to the final.[13] Ceccon won the first heat with 52.58, qualifying second, while Jiayu won the second heat and qualified with the fastest time of 52.02. Jiayu's swim was on pace with Ceccon's world record at the turn, but he lost pace with the record on the final 50 metres. Armstrong and Kós both did not qualify.[16][17]South Africa's Pieter Coetze qualified with a new African record of 52.63 which beat his previous record by 0.15 seconds.[18]
The final took place at 21:32 on 29 July.[19] Jiayu swam the fastest opening 50 metre split of 24.88, which was the only sub-25 second split of the field. His closing 50 metre split was the slowest in the field, but he held on to win the silver medal with a time of 52.32. Ceccon was third at the 50 metre mark, but swam the fastest closing 50 metres to win gold with 52.00.[20][21] Murphy won bronze with 52.39, which was 0.02 seconds ahead of Christou in fourth. Coetze broke his African record again with 52.58, placing him in fifth.[20][22]
After the swim Ceccon said he had changed his "tactical approach" since losing to Murphy at the 2023 Championships, and that his swim was "proof that sometimes you can lose, but you can learn from that".[23] His win gave Italy their first gold medal in the event.[24]
↑ Several top swimmers chose not to attend the 2024 World Championships to focus on their Olympic training regime,[3] and Ceccon withdrew in the lead up to the Championships due to a finger injury.[4]
↑ World Aquatics required Russian athletes to have not shown any support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine to be able to compete as neutral athletes at the Games.[7] Rylov had participated in a pro-war rally so was not elegible,[8] and Kolesnikov said the conditions were "unacceptable" and chose not to compete.[9]
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