Some rivalries are built on animosity. This one is built on a group chat, a shared training group, and a whole lot of mutual respect.
On the final night of the Toyota USA Swimming National Championships in Irvine, Kate Douglass and Gretchen Walsh will step onto the blocks together in the women's 50 freestyle, the same race the two of them have spent this entire summer trading a world record back and forth in. They train in the same lanes, at the same pool, under the same coaching staff at the University of Virginia. And right now, they are also the two fastest women in history in a 22-second race.
At Swim With Milo, we think this is one of the best stories in swimming to put in front of young athletes, not because of who wins on Saturday, but because of what their entire summer says about what a training environment can do for two people at once.
The story actually started in Indianapolis in June. Douglass, racing with Walsh right beside her in the pool, clocked a 23.59 in the 50 free final to break Sarah Sjostrom's world record of 23.61. Walsh finished second in that same race, in 23.78, close enough to feel it happen in real time. Douglass called it "complete shock" afterward, saying she never expected a world record in her life, and that having her teammates next to her made the whole thing more fun.
Nine days later, at the Sette Colli meet in Rome, Walsh took the record back, going 23.55 to shave four hundredths off Douglass's mark. Her reaction wasn't rivalry, it was celebration. Told about beating her own training partner's world record, Walsh said she wasn't even sure at first that she'd actually done it. Douglass's response, posted to her Instagram story with a photo of Walsh, read simply: "was fun while it lasted 🤝."
That's not the language of competitors trying to one-up each other. That's two teammates who happen to keep breaking the same record.
Now the two are entered in the same event again, on the final day of Nationals, in what's shaping up to be one of the most anticipated races of the entire meet. With no guarantee Douglass will swim the 50 free at next month's Pan Pacific Championships, this could be her last real shot this season to take the record back from her training partner and reclaim the top spot in history, even if only for a matter of hours or days before someone lowers it again.
Whatever happens on the blocks, the two will walk away from this meet as, by a wide margin, the two fastest women who have ever swum the event. Before this summer, both of their best times sat outside the top 25 performances in history. Now they occupy the top two spots on the all-time list, and they got there by pushing each other, literally lane over lane, all season long.
It would be easy to write this off as two exceptionally gifted athletes who happened to end up at the same school. But that undersells what's actually happening. Douglass and Walsh were teammates at Virginia during one of the most dominant stretches in NCAA women's swimming history, and they still train together now as professionals, well past the point where either of them needed to stay in the same pool as the other.
They stayed anyway. And the results this summer suggest that decision mattered. When Douglass broke the record in Indianapolis, Walsh was in the water right next to her, watching it happen up close instead of reading about it later. Nine days later, Walsh broke it herself. It's a pattern that's shown up before in this sport: one swimmer breaking a barrier tends to make it feel achievable for the swimmer right next to them. Watching someone you train with every day do the impossible has a way of quietly moving your own sense of what's possible.
You don't need to be chasing a world record for this story to matter to your own swimming. A few lessons carry directly over.
Your competition can also be your biggest asset. Douglass and Walsh are racing each other for the same world record, and they are each other's best training partners. Those two things aren't in conflict, they're the same relationship. If you have a teammate who's faster than you in practice, that's not just a source of pressure, it's the fastest path to getting better yourself.
Someone else's breakthrough can unlock your own. Walsh didn't need to discover on her own that 23.5-something was possible in the 50 free. Douglass showed her nine days earlier, in the lane right next to her. If a teammate hits a time you didn't think was reachable, let that update your own sense of what's possible instead of just admiring it from a distance.
Genuine sportsmanship and genuine competitiveness aren't opposites. Douglass's reaction to losing her own world record was to celebrate her friend, not to sulk. That's not a lack of competitive fire, both of these swimmers are clearly hunting the same record. It's proof that you can want to win and be happy for the person who beats you, in the same breath.
Staying in a strong training group matters more than status. Neither Douglass nor Walsh needed to keep training together once they turned pro. They chose to anyway, and it's a big part of why they've both had the summer of their careers. If you're in a training group that pushes you, even when it's uncomfortable to be the slower one in the lane some days, that discomfort is often exactly what's making you faster.
Whatever the clock says on Saturday night in Irvine, Douglass and Walsh have already put together one of the most compelling storylines of the season, not despite training together, but because of it. For any young swimmer wondering whether to chase a faster training group or stick with a comfortable one, this is what the harder choice can look like when it pays off.
At Swim With Milo, we build our coaching around exactly this kind of environment, pushing swimmers to train around people who make them better, not just people who make them comfortable. Let's get to work.
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