The Week That Was: The 5 Swimming Headlines You Might Have Missed

Photo by Kyle Staggs

PHOENIX, Arizona, September 22. WE just had a pretty big week of swimming-related news, and if you were unable to keep up with all the headlines, today’s show will bring you up to date on the top five swimming stories of the past week. Let’s start with some news from college, as the reigning men’s NCAA Division I champions kicked off their season with an annual competition.


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At number five is the annual King and Queen of the Pool competition on the campus of California Polytechnic State University on Friday. The meet featured 100 yards of all four strokes plus a 100 IM, and the person with the fastest combined time is named King or Queen of the Pool. On the men’s side, Will Hamilton took down Ryan Murphy with five strong races, including the fastest time of the day in the 100 fly with a 48.35 and a 49.15 to win the 100 IM as well. Hamilton might have had a bit of an advantage, as Murphy had just come off the Pan Pacific championships three weeks earlier and was likely still getting into the rhythm of the season. As far as the women are concerned, Celina Li was able to remain Queen of the Pool as the Cal sophomore beat Elizabeth Pelton by two and a half seconds despite not winning any events. The deciding event for Li was the 100 breast, in which she beat Pelton by two seconds. The other three people in this photo represented Cal Poly and were the top swimmers from their squads. Allison de Peralta was 12th overall, while Mickey Mackle and Brandon Nguyen tied for 18th overall. Missy Franklin competed in the meet, but skipped out on the 100 back and 100 breast. She had the fastest time in the 100 free with a 50.27.

Moving on to our number four headline of the week. It’s not much of a surprise that Katie Ledecky won USA Swimming’s athlete of the year award and the performance of the year award last weekend, given how astounding 2014 has been for her. Ledecky’s 1500 freestyle at the Pan Pacific championships was voted the performance of the year, and to be honest, did any other swim by an American come close to that? These are bound to be the first of many honors bestowed on Ledecky this year, and all very well deserved.

On the Masters swimming front, the number three headline of the week involves a vote that would have made 25-yard races in U.S. Masters Swimming competitions official. Though local meets have been putting 25s into their schedules on an exhibition basis, a proposal was brought forward at last week’s convention that would make 25s official and give USMS the opportunity to present those distances at national championships. The vote was not recommended by the USMS rules committee, which meant if the House of Delegates was to pass the proposal, it would need a two-thirds majority of votes. According to our sources, the vote was killed by just two votes against it. This doesn’t mean we won’t continue to see 25s at Masters meets. In fact, you might see it more often now that the conversation has reached the general Masters community.

The Asian Games began on Sunday in South Korea, and the first day of finals produced some major drama, particularly in the men’s 200 free for our number two headline. The media had been hyping an intense battle between China’s Sun Yang and local favorite Tae Hwan Park in the 200 free, and very few expected Japan’s Kosuke Hagino to be a serious challenger. But Hagino was the one who captured the gold medal with a 1:45.23, the fastest time of 2014. Hagino did what very few thought was possible: he outsplit Sun on the final 50 meters, 26.00 to 26.98 to rally from third to first. Sun was so determined to get the win that on the finish, he jammed his hand into the wall, severely hurting two of his fingers. Chinese media reported that no bones were broken, but the swelling was so severe that Sun had to sit out the 800 free relay on Monday. No word yet on Sun’s participation in the rest of the meet, including the 400 free prelims which will take place in a few hours.

And now we’ve arrived at the number one swimming headline of the week, and it involves the release of the qualifying times for the 2016 US Olympic Swimming Trials. All 26 events feature faster times than it took to qualify for the 2012 Trials, the first time in at least a decade that USA Swimming has made such wholesale changes to the cuts. Larry Herr, who was at the front of this effort to create the qualifying times, said the goal is to have between 1,300 and 1,400 swimmers at the meet in 2016, lower than the 1,800 who swam in 2012. The qualifying period began on July 30, the first day of the junior national championships, and as of last Thursday, the date of the announcement, 756 swimmers have qualified for the meet. Here’s an interesting tidbit from the meet: Katie Ledecky is the only female swimmer to have surpassed the qualifying times for the MEN’S 400 and 800 freestyles. Pretty impressive, though those two events are the only ones slower than the current American record. If you missed the announcement and want to take a look at the times, go to our USA channel at swimmingworld.com and you’ll find the article regarding the Olympic Trials qualifying times.

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