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After two fourth-place finishes in the 400 free and 800 free at the 2015 FINA world championships, Connor Jaeger was determined to get on the medal podium for the 1500 freestyle, his final event. The result was a silver medal in an American record time of 15:41.20.
Bruce Gemmell, who was in charge of coaching the American distance swimmers at the meet, was partly responsible for giving Jaeger a bit of a boost before the race to motivate him to break Larsen Jensen’s mark of 14:45..
“My coach here, Bruce Gemmell, gave me kind of a sarcastic kick in the (butt), right before I was getting out of the pool,” Jaeger said. “He said, ‘It’s probably about time that record gets broken. It’s probably one of the longest ones standing.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you know, I think it is,’ just kind of joking back with him.”
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Jaeger had two days between the 800 free final and the 1500 free final to mentally regroup, and he said that was the key to being able to fight for a medal.
“I had a two-day break in between just to kind of pick my head back up today, and realize there was a new chance at a medal and a best time and an American record,” he said.
Jaeger noticed that defending champion Sun Yang had not reported to the ready room before the race, and he said he wasn’t sure what to think about the turn of events that led to Sun withdrawing from the race.
“Honestly, I didn’t want to get my hopes up,” he said. “I thought he was probably just messing with us. I don’t want to rely on people not being there. I got too excited earlier in this meet about different people not being in the final, and I shouldn’t have to rely on that.
“We were stepping up on the blocks, and he still wasn’t there, and I was just thinking ‘Wow, this is really happening,’” he said.
