The Week That Was: Revisiting Top 5 Swimming Headlines of the Week

09-12-14 MWSD vs Delta State Abbas Qali Photo by Amelia J. Brackin

PHOENIX, Arizona, September 15. ONE of the top five swimming headlines of the past week came from the ASCA world clinic, and we’ll get to that soon, but we start this week’s countdown with some record-breaking open water swims around the world.


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Our number five headline features three open water swimmers who did some remarkable things as they swam across some large bodies of water last week. We’ll start with two swims across the English Channel. First, Otto Thaning, a South African heart surgeon, became the oldest man to cross the English Channel when the 73-year-old completed the swim last week. Just a week earlier, a 70-year-old from Australia crossed the Channel to become the oldest to do so. The day after Thaning’s swim, 16-year-old American Charlotte Samuels crossed the English Channel and was named the youngest swimmer to complete the Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming. In June, Samuels completed the swim around Manhattan Island then swam across Catalina Channel in August, making her one of the few people to complete all three in one open water season. Samuels was the 99th person to complete the Triple Crown, so we’re excited to see who number 100 will be. Over here in the United States, Canadian Paul Duffield unofficially became the first person to swim across the U.S.-Canada border when he swam 10 miles in Osoyoos Lake. Because there is no official organization for such swims, it’s hard to know if Duffield is really the first, but he was the first to make it with the help of official border services. Congratulations to all three.

It’s mid-September, and the college swimming season has begun in the United States. Alabama’s home meet against Delta State on Friday makes our number four headline of the week because it marked the first Division I meet of the season. Alabama’s men and women had no problem winning the meet, but the Crimson Tide was hampered by the injury of star breaststroker Anton McKee, who broke his collarbone this summer. NCAA champion Kristian Gkolomeev won the 50 free with a 19.50 and Kaylin Burchell was the top women’s swimmer with a 1:01.62 in the 100 breast. You can read the full results from the meet on our college news channel at swimmingworld.com.

High school seniors made this a busy week for college swim coaches, as many athletes made their verbal commitments in the past few days to put their announcements at number three on our countdown. Many of the top universities in the country got the call that they would add some rising talents to their rosters. Ella Eastin, a member of the national junior team and the current national independent high school record holder in the 200 individual medley, will move from Irvine north to the Bay Area to attend Stanford University. Like Eastin, Nick Norman is leaving southern California for the Bay Area, making his verbal commitment to the California Gold Bears on Wednesday. Norman will help Cal in the distance freestyle, helping the squad to move on after the graduation of Jeremy Bagshaw. Lily King is staying in her home state as well, choosing Indiana University as her college of choice to add some breaststroke strength to the Hoosier squad. College commitments will be coming in fast and furious in the coming months, and we’ll try to stay on top of them on swimmingworld.com.

We are less than two years away from the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials in Omaha, Nebraska, and while it might not seem like it’s right around the corner, it will be here before you know it. Coming in at number two on this week’s show is the announcement of the dates for the meet, which will be June 26 through July 3. That will give the Olympians a little more than a month to prepare for the meet, which has been the situation for Team USA for the past four Olympic Trials. While many have called for USA Swimming to run Olympic Trials earlier in the year to give athletes more time between meets for preparation, the results show that the United States has had more success with a Trials held just before the Olympics – with the 1996 Games in Atlanta as the exception. We’ll see how this Trials turns out, including how many new swimmers we’ll see on the Olympic team and what the world has in store in 2016. The Olympic Trials qualifying times will be released on Thursday during a special webcast event, the first time USA Swimming is doing so.

As I mentioned at the top of this show, one of the headlines on this episode of The Week That Was would feature news from the ASCA World Clinic, and that’s what our number one headline is. To the surprise of nearly no one, Bruce Gemmell was awarded the ASCA Coach of the Year by his peers at a banquet in Florida Friday evening. Gemmell richly deserved the honor based on the tremendous achievements by Katie Ledecky this year, including five gold medals at the Pan Pacific championships and breaking the long course world records in the 400, 800 and 1500 freestyles to become the first since Janet Evans to own all three simultaneously. Gemmell also had a hand in guiding his son Andrew to gold in the Pan Pac 10K open water swim, the first major international victory for Andrew to cement his place in the open water canon. Bruce Gemmell has a large number of swimmers under his watch at Nation’s Capital, and while the accolade from ASCA highlighted his work with the best of the best, there are many other swimmers who have seen success in 2014 thanks to Gemmell’s work. So we offer our congratulations to Bruce, and fellow nominees Bob Bowman, Mike Bottom, David Marsh, Greg Meehan and Gregg Troy.

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