In this GMM takeover of the SwimSwam Podcast, we sit down with 8-time Olympic medalist Regan Smith after a 2026 season that has been fast, revealing and, at times, frustrating.
At the Pan Pacific Championships, Regan came away with gold in the 200 backstroke, silver in the 50 and 100 back, and a fourth-place in the 200 IM. But the results don’t tell the whole story.
In both of her signature backstroke events, Regan was faster in prelims than in the final. She went 57.86 in the 100 back prelim before finishing second in 58.11, then dropped a 2:04.13 in the 200 back prelim before winning the final in 2:05.57.
For one of the most consistent swimmers in the world, that morning-to-night disconnect stands out. We dig into what happened at Pan Pacs and what Regan learned from it. And Regan is her on own harshest critic. In this podcast she’s thinking through her season, noting her frustration that she trained repeated 8k color sets ahead of the Fort Lauderdale Open and ripped a 57.4 100m back–but tapers for Pan Pacs and doesn’t get under 58 at night in the finals.
Through that lens, we look back at 2026 and the bigger picture. Regan has been remarkably consistent in the 100 back, repeatedly racing in the 57-second range while carrying a heavy training load. In the 200 back, she is once again approaching the 2:03.35 lifetime best. And the most interesting developments happened outside Regan’s traditional events. She set lifetime bests this year in the 200 freestyle (1:56.9) and 400 IM (4:35.7), while also producing elite times of 55.94 in the 100 fly and 2:04.73 in the 200 fly. We ask about her expanding event range and how it figures into her training and her schedule under coach Bob Bowman.
The landscape around Regan is changing, and it changed this year. Katharine Berkoff beat her in both the 50 and 100 back at Pan Pacs, while Isabelle Stadden has emerged as another world-class threat. Before Regan can worry about Kaylee McKeown internationally, the race simply to make the U.S. Olympic team is becoming increasingly tough.
We ask Regan about McKeown, who took the season off due to glandular fever. McKeown later added more context to her challenges, explaining on the Something To Talk About podcast that she was also managing endometriosis, a chronic medical condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside it and can cause severe pelvic pain.
Much of Regan’s podcast is about taper—mastering a taper—and then about training and what training actually means year over year when you’re paying into the base-bank at a high level.
Regan also looks forward to the fall, and we witness in real time how she thinks about whether to train through or focus on the U.S. Short Course World Championship Trials. At this point in time, she appears to be leaning toward U.S. World Trials.
Off topic, but it deserves mentioning, Regan reports that the USA Swimming National Team experience has greatly improved, and that she feels supported and more confident on the road to 2028.
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This is a Gold Medal Media production presented by SwimOutlet.com. Host Gold Medal Mel Stewart is a 3-time Olympic medalist and the co-founder of SwimSwam.com, a Swimming News website.
Opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the interviewed guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the hosts, SwimSwam Partners, LLC and/or SwimSwam advertising partners.
