Italian Breaststroker Anita Bottazzo Making Quick Impact For Florida Gators
As expected, the flurry of midseason invitationals provided a significant shake-up to the national rankings in college swimming. For the men, Texas sophomore Rex Maurer has emerged on the scene with his monster performance that resulted in nation-leading times in three events, while teammate Will Modglin and Florida’s Julian Smith both took big steps at midseason, finishing in the No. 1 spot in their respective events. They join veterans Jordan Crooks, Hubert Kos, Ilya Kharun and Josh Matheny currently in pole position.
For the women, the list of top times includes past NCAA-title winners Gretchen Walsh, Claire Curzan and Emma Sticklen, a freshman in Jillian Cox who arrived in college already established in the mid-distance and distance freestyle events and returning swimmers who have taken steps forward since last season: Tennessee’s Camille Spink, Michigan’s Stephanie Balduccini, Stanford’s Caroline Bricker and Duke’s Kaelyn Gridley.
Of that last group of swimmers, all except Balduccini qualified for A-finals at last year’s NCAA Championships. Over the weekend at the Georgia Tech Invite, the Michigan sophomore cut more than a second from her best time to position herself nicely for the spring. She has never been a headliner, even on her own team, but she has been on the radar for those who follow college swimming closely.
That’s not the case for the swimmer who leads the national rankings in the women’s 100 breaststroke, Florida freshman Anita Bottazzo. The 20-year-old is a new arrival in Gainesville this season, and at her first midseason meet, the Georgia Invite, she finished one-and-a-half seconds ahead of teammate Molly Mayne, who swam the breaststroke leg on a pair of top-four medley relays at last year’s NCAA Championships.
Bottazzo’s time of 57.49 annihilated Mayne’s school record, and it would have been good enough for seventh place at last year’s national meet. That’s especially significant considering four of the top-six swimmers in the race have departed college swimming, with only USC’s Kaitlyn Dobler and Tennessee’s Mona McSharry returning for their fifth years (although McSharry has yet to race this season).
However, Bottazzo is by no stranger to high-level racing, having represented Italy in the 50-meter breast at the World Championships in 2023 and 2024. In 2023, she placed fifth in the final in 30.11, only seven hundredths behind bronze-medal-winning countrywoman Benedetta Pilato, and her prelims mark of 30.03 would have been good enough to make the podium.
In 2024, Bottazzo was a semifinalist in the 50 breast at the Doha World Championships, and she posted the sixth-fastest swim in the 100-meter breast by an Italian woman at 1:07.43, by no means a bad time but not enough to qualify for the Olympics when her competition included Pilato and eventual Paris semifinalist Lisa Angiolini.
At the moment, Bottazzo is a one-event swimmer on the college level, with her times in other events not yet national-caliber. She is sprint-centric swimmer, with a 200-yard time of 2:10.48. Still, an elite sprint breaststroker offers huge possibilities to a team with ambitions of big relay points and another NCAA top-three trophy.
This year’s Gators team returns the versatile Bella Sims, who won individual NCAA titles in the 200 and 500-yard freestyle last year while swimming on four relays, as well as sprinters Micayla Cronk and Olivia Peoples, but Isabel Ivey has exhausted her college eligibility after she played such a central role in pushing the team to a third-place finish in her one season with the Gators. Florida did not add any big-name freshman, transfers or redshirts in the offseason.
Except Bottazzo, that is. If she holds her status among the country’s elite breaststrokers through the spring, the Gators will benefit greatly from the individual points provided and the boost to their medley relays. No one will beat Virginia teams featuring Walsh, Curzan and Olympian Emma Weber, but a team of Sims, Bottazzo, Peoples and Cronk will be competitive enough to keep Florida in the conversation for an overall top-three finish.