Torri Huske: Top things you didn't know about the US queen of butterfly swimming

Victoria ‘Torri’ Huske always seems to produce her best swimming performances on the biggest stages.

Aged 18, the Virginia native was one of 11 teenagers who competed for Team USA at the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 in 2021 after breaking the USA women’s 100m butterfly record twice at trials.

In Japan, Huske’s performance was no less impressive, helping her nation secure silver in the women’s 4x100 medley relay, and finishing fourth in the 100m fly by one-hundredth of a second.

Coming so close to an individual medal on Olympic debut became one of her key motivations to improve.

And so it proved a year later at the 2022 World Championships in Budapest, where the young flyer became the 100m butterfly world champion (breaking her own American record again), and took home further gold medals in the 4x100 medley and the 4x100 mixed medley relay races.

Huske also claimed the bronze medals in the women’s 100m freestyle, the 4x100 freestyle relay, and the 4x100m mixed freestyle in the Hungarian capital.

But what else do you know about the butterfly queen, who is now chasing a first Olympic gold medal at the Olympic Games Paris 2024?

• How to qualify for swimming at Paris 2024

1 - Torri Huske didn’t initially like swimming!

It may sound strange, but the current women’s 100m butterfly world champion didn’t particularly like swimming to begin with.

Aged five or six, Huske’s parents took her to a local pool in Virginia, but she had to wear a wetsuit in order to cope with the cold.

She preferred instead to practise ice skating, football (soccer), running, and Taekwondo.

“I was always really cold all the time,” Huske told Washington City Paper. “And I feel like that was a big factor. Probably for the first like two years …

"I didn’t really care for it, but I feel like I just kind of stuck with it anyway. I’m not really exactly sure why, but it eventually did start to grow on me and I really liked it.”

2 - Torri Huske is inspired by her Chinese mother

Huske’s Mother, Ying Weng Huske, was born in Guangzhou in the People’s Republic of China.

Ying eventually moved to the United States in order to study at Virginia Tech, and worked for the U.S. Navy.

“My mom has a cool story. She studied architecture in China but she absolutely hated it, so later she studied engineering at Virginia Tech, and she didn’t like engineering that much either, and then she became like an IT person,” Huske told USA Swimming.

“I feel like she is a really big inspiration to me. Yeah, I’m just lucky to have her. I feel like I’m living out my American Dream.”

Ying Huske’s strong work ethic rubbed off on her daughter, and recently told The Washington Post of her daughter: “She’s a hard-working girl. Sometimes I have to say: ‘Hey Tori, relax! You don’t have to be so serious.”

3 - Impressing Katie Ledecky and enrolling at Stanford University

Huske and Katie Ledecky first met in December 2018, and the women’s swimming GOAT was immediately impressed.

“Her 100 fly is really fast, but she’s so diverse in the events that she swims and really could be a contender in a number of events," Ledecky told reporters.

Ledecky was predictably right, and after Tokyo 2020, Huske joined the prestigious swimming programme at Stanford University, whose roster also included fellow Olympians Ledecky, Simone Manuel, and Regan Smith.

There she trains under Greg Meehan, who also coached the USA women’s squad at the Olympics, and is helping to nurture her butterfly, freestyle and 200 individual medley.

4 -Torri Huske’s ‘fly and die’ racing strategy

A major reason behind Huske’s meteoric rise in swimming comes from her ultra-competitive mindset.

Nowhere is this more evident than in her approach to swimming butterfly, which she describes as “fly and die.” 

“It’s a sprint [so] I’m not gonna hold back really my first 50,” she told USA Today. “My first 50 anywhere, I don’t feel anything just because of all the adrenaline and the nerves and stuff like that. So I kind of just let my body take it out, and then usually I feel it more in the second half.”

If Huske doesn’t give it everything on the front 50, she ‘settles into a slower tempo’ and risks not being able to make up the gap on the home straight.

“I like to go out in the first 50 and see how fast I can go,” she continued. “I’m not trying to switch it or trying necessarily to go fast, but I’m just not restraining myself at all. I’m just going, and the second half, I just kind of see what I have left.”

5 - Huske is also a keen painter

Huske’s talents are anything but confined to the swimming pool and Stanford classrooms.

While her sport requires relentless dedication to what can sometimes be a monotonous training regime, she exercises her creative muscles through painting.

“My first time visiting the Stanford campus was at Nationals, and I stayed in my friends’ friends’ grandparents’ house,” Huske continued to USA Today.

“And they had the most beautiful house like, picture perfect, flowers everywhere. It was a really beautiful house. I took some pictures of it while I was there, and I thought it was kind of special because that was the first time I ever visited the campus, and I’d be going there next year. So I decided to paint a part of the house.”

You can see the very impressive canvas below!