The women's 100 metre freestyle was a swimming

Swimming (sport)

Swimming is a sport governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation .-History: Competitive swimming in Europe began around 1800 BCE, mostly in the form of the freestyle. In 1873 Steve Bowyer introduced the trudgen to Western swimming competitions, after copying the front crawl used by Native...

 event held as part of the swimming at the 1920 Summer Olympics

Swimming at the 1920 Summer Olympics

At the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp, ten swimming events were contested. The women's 300 metre freestyle event was new since the previous Games in 1912. The competitions were held from Sunday August 22, 1920 to Sunday August 29, 1920...

 programme. It was the second appearance of the event, which was one of the two women's events held in 1912.

A total of 19 swimmers from nine nations competed in the event, which was held on Monday, August 23 and on Wednesday, August 25, 1920.

Records

These were the standing world and Olympic records (in minutes) prior to the 1920 Summer Olympics.

World Record	1:16.2	Fanny Durack Fanny Durack Sarah Frances "Fanny" Durack was an Australian swimmer. From 1910 until 1918 she was the world's greatest female swimmer of all distances from freestyle sprints to the mile marathon.-Life and career:...	Sydney Sydney Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...  (AUS Australia Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... )	February 6, 1915
Olympic Record	1:19.8	Fanny Durack Fanny Durack Sarah Frances "Fanny" Durack was an Australian swimmer. From 1910 until 1918 she was the world's greatest female swimmer of all distances from freestyle sprints to the mile marathon.-Life and career:...	Stockholm Stockholm Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...  (SWE Sweden Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund.... )	July 11, 1912

Frances Schroth

Frances Schroth

Frances Cowells Schroth was an American freestyle swimmer who competed in the 1920 Summer Olympics....

 broke the Olympic record in the first semifinal with a time of 1:18.0 minutes. Ethelda Bleibtrey

Ethelda Bleibtrey

Ethelda Bleibtrey was a swimmer from the United States notable for winning three gold medals at the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp.Bleibtrey started swimming to help recover from polio, which she caught in 1917...

broke world record in the third semifinal with 1:14.4 and lowered her own new record in the final to 1:13.6.

Semifinals

Monday, August 23, 1920: The fastest two in each semi-final and the fastest third-placed from across the semi-finals advanced.

Semifinal 1

Place	Swimmer	Time	Qual.
1		1:18.0	Q OR
2		1:20.4	Q
3		1:22.6
4
5
6

Semifinal 2

Place	Swimmer	Time	Qual.
1		1:18.8	Q
2		1:20.8	Q
3		1:21.4	q
4
5
6
7

Semifinal 3

Place	Swimmer	Time	Qual.
1		1:14.4	Q WR
2		1:25.6	Q
3		1:27.4
4
5
6

Final

Wednesday, August 25, 1920:

Place	Swimmer	Time
1		1:13.6 WR
2		1:17.0
3		1:17.2
4		1:22.8
5
6
—		DNF