Lakeville’s Regan Smith recorded a season-best time in the 200-meter backstroke final at the World Championships on Saturday in Singapore, touching the wall in 2 minutes, 4.29 seconds.
That was less than a second behind Australian backstroke queen Kaylee McKeown, and gave Smith her fourth individual silver medal of the major meet.
Smith also finished second in the 50 backstroke, 200 fly and the 100 backstroke, the latter was also won by McKeown.
Smith came out hard in Saturday’s race. She was ahead of world-record pace at the 100-meter mark and still held a three-hundredths advantage over McKeown at the final turn. But the Australian finished strong to comfortably win the race.
“Something I’ve been really working on is focusing on my own race. I think it really helped me on the outside lane, not seeing the other girls around me, and just really focusing on what I’ve been working on,” McKeown told reporters. “I don’t see a whole lot when I’m racing. I had to ask for my time at the end.”
Fellow American Claire Curzan finished third with a time of 2:06.04, putting two Americans on the podium in the event.
“It’s really special, it’s been a while since we had two Americans on the podium in the 200 backstroke,” Smith told reporters. “It’s 2025 and we have 3 years until the big dance (in LA) so that is something we absolutely want to repeat in the years going forward.”
Smith figures to swim the backstroke leg for Team USA in the women’s 4×100 medley relay on Sunday — the final day of competition. She won gold in that event in last year’s Olympics.
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