5 Races to Keep an Eye on at U.S. Winter Nationals

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Photo Courtesy: Andy Ringgold / Aringo Photos

By David Rieder.

Sure, the field at this weekend’s U.S. Winter Nationals in Atlanta will be missing a few familiar faces: athletes who have retired or taken a break from training post-Olympics, others who are competing for their college teams elsewhere, members of the Short Course World Championships team prepping for their trip to Windsor and high school students who have opted instead for regional meets or one of the two Junior National championships scheduled for a week later.

Still, there figures to be plenty of exciting racing this weekend at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center with eight different swimmers who have won Olympic medals leading the way and a collection of college and high school stalwarts filling in the gaps. Check out our picks for the top five events of the meet.

1. Men’s 400 IM

This one does not make the list because it figures to be a particularly competitive race. Quite the opposite, actually, as only one finalist from Olympic Trials will even be in the field. But a lot is expected from the 18-year-old Texas native who holds the World Junior record in the long course version of the 400 IM.

That would be Sean Grieshop, who has verbally committed to swim next year for Cal-Berkeley. His best time long course is 4:14.00, which ranks him among the top 20 swimmers in the world this year. But short course, Grieshop’s best time is 3:44.30, which would not even have made the top 16 at the NCAA championships earlier this year.

Grieshop, who recently attended a pair of Asian stops of the World Cup circuit with the U.S. National Junior team but trained through the meets, figures to have some time drops coming in the short course pool, and he could certainly make his name a more familiar one among swimming fans with a strong performance in Atlanta—particularly in the 400 IM, where he is favored to win his first National championship.

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Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

2. Women’s Distance Free

Some under-the-radar strong matchups await in both the 500 and 1650 with the likes of Lindsey ClaryRachel Muller and Brooke Zeiger on hand. All three scored in both distances at last year’s NCAA championships and figure to be among the key figures for their respective teams at this year’s meet as well.

Clary, a senior at Ohio State, is actually the top seed in all three of her grueling events at Nationals, which include these two distance races and the 400 IM. Next up is Muller, another senior and one who has been a key consistent force in the rise of the NC State Wolfpack over the past several seasons. Zeiger will be the youngest of the the trio, but the Minnesota junior finished eighth in the mile at the NCAA championships last year after not even contesting the event a year before on the national level.

Less than two seconds separate the trio in their seed times in the 500 free, where Clary leads the way at 4:38.15, while Clary enters seeded about 11 seconds ahead of Muller and Zeiger in the 1650 with her 15:49.98.

2016.03.19 2016 Womens NCAA Swimming Championships_Ohio State Lindsey Clary

Photo Courtesy: Reagan Lunn/Georgia Tech Athletics

Men’s 200 free

When you watch this final, rest assured: you did not accidentally stumble onto video of one of Gregg Troy’s mid-distance practices at the University of Florida. But it would probably look fairly similar to this race.

That’s because three of the top four seeds here are Gators. Leading the way is Mitch D’Arrigo, who narrowly missed out on the semifinals of the 200 free while representing Italy at the Olympics this summer in Rio. Seeded right behind him is Maxime Rooney, the 2015 U.S. National champion and World Junior Champion who figures to be a heavy-impact freshman for the Gators this season.

Indiana’s Anze Tavcar is the third seed, and right behind him is Caeleb Dressel. Yes, that Caeleb Dressel, the sprinter extraordinaire making his return to Georgia Tech eight months after his dazzling NCAA championships performance and just two weeks after the Georgia Tech Invitational.

Sure, the 200 free might be a little long for Dressel—he finished 32nd in the long course version of the race at Olympic Trials in 1:49.93—but plenty of sprinters have found a way through the 200-yard free in years past. For the talented 20-year-old, the potential for a big swim here is intriguing, to say the least.

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Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Women’s 200 breast

A wide variety of contenders in this event from much different backgrounds should make this 200 breast one of the meet’s top races. The top seed in this event is Breeja Larson, less than three years removed from an outstanding career at Texas A&M in which she won four NCAA titles, one in this event, and never finished outside the top three in a breaststroke event at the college level. Oh, and she was a 2012 Olympic finalist in the 100 breast.

Miranda Tucker finished second in this event at the NCAA championships last year while competing for Indiana but has since transferred to Michigan. She’s not yet eligible to compete collegiately for the Wolverines, so she will be in Atlanta while the Michigan teams head to the Georgia Invite in Athens, and Tucker can finish as well as anyone in the field.

Seeded in third in this race is one of the top high school breaststrokers in the country, Nikol Popov. Entered at 2:08.92, Popov will have a chance to get into her first national final here and upstage some of her older competitors. Popov trains in California with the Canyons Aquatic Club, but she has signed with the University of Tennessee, located only a few hours’ drive north of Atlanta in Knoxville.

And then down on the psych sheet is Melanie Margalis, who finished fourth in the 200 IM at the Olympics in Rio and won a gold medal for her role on the 800 free relay. She’s way down on the psych sheet with her long course entry time of 2:24.68, but she’s a fantastic breaststroker, having finished fifth in the event at Olympic Trials. Good firepower from all across the board in this one.

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Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Men’s 100 back

Possibly the top race of the meet will come in the men’s 100 back as a past Olympic medalist, an NCAA champion backstroker who isn’t really a backstroker and a young local star square off. The Olympic medalist, of course, is Arkady Vyatchanin, who won bronze medals in the 100 and 200 back in 2008 but did not compete in Rio as FINA would not allow him to switch his sporting nationality from Russia to Serbia.

Tom Shields is also an Olympian, of course, and he swam in the 100 fly final this summer in Rio. But with the aid of some stellar underwater dolphin kicks, Shields has a great short course backstroke, and he won a pair of NCAA titles in the 100 back during his career at Cal-Berkeley. This meet will be Shields’ tune-up for the Short Course World Championships, which begin Dec. 6 in Windsor.

But the one to watch should be the teenager seeded fifth, 17-year-old Florida commit and Atlanta-native Michael Taylor. Taylor finished fifth at Olympic Trials in the 100 back and seventh in the 200 back. Based on his breakthrough long course performances in Omaha, his short course best time of 47.17 seems due for some improvement. That could happen Friday.

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Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

BONUS: The quest for pool records

Pool records? You might be thinking, ‘Who cares about pool records?’

But remember, this is the same pool that hosted the Olympic Games in 1996 and several stellar NCAA championships, including both the women’s and men’s meets this past March, when every single short course pool record except one (Peter Vanderkaay’s 4:08.60 in the 500 free) was broken. It would take an outstanding effort to see any of those pool records go down at Nationals.

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Lotta Nevalainen
7 years ago

yeaahh @muller_rachel ???

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