NCAA Record in 100 Breast Solidifies Unique Julian Smith in Select Club
The first man to break 50 seconds for 100 yards of breaststroke never represented the United States as a senior international, never made the final of an event at Olympic Trials.
The second swam at the University of Minnesota, far from the mainstream of NCAA hotbeds.
The third won the C final at SEC Championships in his true sophomore year of college.
And the fourth graduated high school tied for the 44th-fastest time in the nation his senior season.
The sub-50 club in men’s breaststroke is an unusual fraternity. It includes no one who has (yet) swum at an Olympics or a World Championships in the long-course realm. Instead, it features four swimmers whose journeys have been amazingly diverse.
Julian Smith renewed his membership in that contingent Friday night at the SEC Championships, clocking in at 49.51 seconds to re-set the NCAA and American records in his second career sub-50 swim. He took the record from Liam Bell, the Cal swimmer who set it at NCAAs in 2024. Bell had moved Ian Finnerty off his perch, the Indiana swimmer holding the record since 2018 at 49.69 and adding a second sub-50 swim the next year. Behind them came the assault of Max McHugh, whose 49.90 brought one of his three NCAA titles in the event.
It’s an amazing – and amazingly unusual – group that Smith belongs to. Briefly:
– Finnerty came out of Indiana’s breaststroke powerhouse that included 2024 Olympian Josh Matheny plus many standouts on the women’s side. He was the first man to break 50 twice, with a 49.85 in repeating as champion in 2019. But Finnerty never translated it into long-course success: He didn’t swim at Olympic Trials delayed a year to 2021 after finishing 11th in the 100, his only event, in 2016.
– McHugh was ticketed for success in high school, the Sturgeon Bay, Wisc., native having gone 51.62 in high school, a national public school record. He delivered on that promise in five years with Minnesota, collecting four NCAA titles.
– Bell, a Georgia native, was the youngest male to qualify for Olympic Trials in 2016. His winding career helped him post the sixth-fastest time in the NCAA in 2019-20, before the national championships were cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic. He struggled as a sophomore with the Crimson Tide, skipping NCAAs (in which he was seeded 24th in the 100 breast) and Olympic Trials before a rebirth in Berkeley. He went 50.50 to set the program mark in 2022, finishing third at NCAAs, then sixth in 2023 at 50.76. Even with that pedigree, the drop from 50.89 at the Pac-12 Championships in 2024 to 49.53 at NCAAs astounded. (His fourth place at Olympic Trials in June, .24 off the second Olympic spot, is also the nearest brush to international long-course representation of the U.S.)
And now, Smith. His time of 49.98 at the Georgia Fall Invitational served notice. His build in Gainesville has been steady and inexorable, even if it might have seemed unlikely at the outset to culminate with SEC Male Swimmer of the Meet honors.
SEC Swimmer of the Meet 🐊 #GoGators pic.twitter.com/6TrM4VXyUu
— Gators Swimming & Diving (@GatorsSwimDv) February 23, 2025
Smith graduated from high school – at the formidable program that is Episcopal School of Jacksonville, under Olympic gold medalist Martin Lopez-Zubero – with a 100 breast best time of 55.57. He lowered that to 52.73 as a freshman at SECs in 2022, then 51.45 for 14th at NCAAs in 2023 and 50.94 at NCAAs in 2024 to place seventh.
But still, the leap from a very good breaststroker and invaluable sprint relay cog to the best short-course breaststroker ever is massive. Yet Smith has done it. His event progression in the 100 breast should be framed and offered to coaches as a wall-hanger.
Inseparable from his rise is his versatility: Where Finnerty, McHugh and Bell were sprint breaststrokers who made cameos in the 200, Smith has all-purpose speed over several strokes and distances. His performance at SECs included a 1:29.67 split on Florida’s 800 free relay that came up just .24 off the quickest time ever and a 200 IM win in 1:39.38, an improvement of more than a second and a half to tie for No. 11 all-time in the event. He opted out of the 200 breast Saturday to concentrate on the 100 free, finishing sixth in 41.34.
Moreover, he backed his record-breaking breaststroke Friday night with a relay split of 48.95, coming up just short of the top split all-time belonging to Leon Marchand. Along with Josh Liendo, Smith was a primary force behind the Gators annihilating the NCAA record in the 400 medley relay by 1.6 seconds. His jump from cog to star seems representative of the career he’s had in Gainesville.
And the unusual nature of his skillset seems to fit perfectly with the unorthodox group he has joined.
