What is a good 50m freestyle time for an 8-year-old?

A good 50m freestyle time for an 8-year-old is about 40.14 seconds for boys and 41.63 for girls — the median of the Australian competitive field. About 37.68 (boys) and 38.34 (girls) reach the top 25% of the age group, and roughly 35.58 seconds (boys) and 36.52 (girls) the top 10%. Every time here comes from a swimmer racing at a sanctioned competition, so the median already sits well ahead of the average child — an 8-year-old near these times is going well.

How age 8 compares

For every age from 7 to 16, with top-25% and top-10% columns, see the full average 50m freestyle time by age table.

How to read this

Median means half of competitive swimmers that age are faster and half are slower. Top 25% and top 10% mark the sharper end of the field. These are long course (50m pool) times. At this age a short course (25m pool) time is usually about the same as long course, or a little slower; the short course advantage from the extra turns shows from around age 11. To check whether your swimmer is close to a championship standard, try the qualifying times calculator.

A single time is a snapshot. What matters more is how much a swimmer improves each year — see how much swimmers improve by age.

Related benchmarks

• Good 50m freestyle time for a 7-year-old
• Good 50m freestyle time for a 9-year-old
• Good 50m backstroke time for an 8-year-old
• Good 50m breaststroke time for an 8-year-old
• Good 50m butterfly time for an 8-year-old

See the 50m freestyle qualifying times your 8-year-old needs for state and national meets →

Source and method: SwimProgress — best long course time per swimmer, per age (age at race date), for 50m freestyle, from more than 600,000 publicly available Australian competition results (2022–2026); each cell is based on at least 45 swimmers. Age is the swimmer's age on race day, based on their recorded or estimated birth date. Anonymised and aggregated. Reuse freely with attribution (CC BY 4.0).