The men's 100 metre butterfly event at the 2024 Summer Olympics was held from 2 to 3 August 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.
The defending Olympic champion, Caeleb Dressel of the USA; the defending Olympic silver medallist, Kristóf Milák of Hungary; and the defending Olympic bronze medallist, Noè Ponti of Switzerland, were returning.[2] Dressel had missed a period of competition from 2022 to 2023,[3] during which Milák won the event at the 2022 World Championships.[2] However, he also took a break from swimming in 2023. Milák returned to training in 2024, but the Hungarian national head coach Csaba Sós reported that Milák had been training inconsistently in the lead up to the Olympics.[4] In Dressel and Milák's absence, France's Maxime Grousset won the event at the 2023 World Championships.[2]
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).[7] For this event, the OQT was 51.67 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.[7][8] Finally, the rest of the spaces were filled by athletes who had met the Olympic Consideration Time (OCT), which was 51.93 for this event.[7] In total, 29 athletes qualified through achieving the OQT, 10 athletes qualified through universality places and one athlete qualified through achieving the OCT.[8]
Five heats took place on 2 August 2024, starting at 11:00.[a][9] The swimmers with the best 16 times in the heats advanced to the semifinals.[10] Milák swam the fastest, with a time of 50.19. Heilman did not qualify.[11]Jesse Ssuubi Ssengonzi lowered his Ugandan record with a time of 53.76.[12]
Two semifinals took place on 2 August, starting at 21:05.[13] The swimmers with the best eight times in the semifinals advanced to the final.[14] Milák claimed the fastest seed with at time of 50.38, and Grousset finished with 50.41 to take the second seed.[15] Dressel did not make it through to the final with a time of 51.57,[16] and was filmed crying after the race.[17]SwimSwam speculated that is poor performance could have been due to having already swum three races that day, including the final of the 50 metre freestyle 30 minutes earlier.[18] Nyls Korstanje set a new Dutch record of 50.59 to qualify fourth, which beat his previous national record of 50.78. None of the countries that qualified had previously won a gold medal in the event.[19]
The final took place at 20:30 on 3 August.[20] Milák won with a time of 49.90;[16][21] he was fifth at the halfway turn but finished with the fastest closing 50 metres split to win gold. Canada's Ilya Kharun had the second fastest closing 50 metres split, which elevated him from seventh at halfway to third at the finish, winning him the bronze.[22] Grousset was third at the 50 metre mark, but performed a slow turn compared to the rest of the field which SwimSwam later opined may have cost him third place.[23] Liendo was second at the 50 metre mark, but he performed a fast open turn and underwater to emerge in the lead. His finishing touch wasn't as well timed as Milák's, which SwimSwam said might have cost him the gold medal.[22] He won silver with a new Canadian national record of 49.99.[24] Karun was the only swimmer to increase his distance per stroke (DPS) throughout the race, while Milák had the highest average DPS.[23]
Liendo's silver made him the fifth fastest performer of all time in the event and won him his first Olympic medal.[24] Liendo and Kharun gave Canada its first double podium of the games since the 1976 Summer Olympics.[25]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
