ISL Match 8 Notes: MVP Caeleb Dressel Everywhere Condors Need Him to Be
There are two ways to view the MVP race in the International Swimming League, the quantity lens or the quality lens. With swimmers like Lilly King or Siobhan Haughey, with well-defined specialties over stroke or distance, it’s about quality, maximizing the points that can come from a limited number of events.
With speedsters like Caeleb Dressel, in a league where the fun of 50s is a cornerstone of the package, there’s a quantity aspect. It’s not just how fast Dressel can go, but how often he can summon that speed.
Dressel didn’t disappoint Friday in the conclusion of ISL Match 8, again earning an MVP award and leading the Condors to a win in the showdown with the London Roar. With it, the Condors move top of the standings, all alone with 12 points from three matches.
The Condors collected 507 points, ahead of the Roar (491.5) most of the way. The Tokyo Frog Kings were a distant third with 419, and New York Breakers brought up the rear with 296.5 points.
A big reason was Dressel’s MVP tally of 69 points, down from the 75 in Match 4. But more awesome is the sheer volume of swims he endures. Dressel was in the water 10 times during the two days of ISL Match 8. He won the 100 butterfly, 50 freestyle, 50 fly, 100 free and 100 individual medley. He added two relay swims, third in the 50 breaststroke and third in each of the first two rounds of the breaststroke skins, adding 12 points to clinch the win.
The 10 swims are down from 11 in Match 4 (the difference there was Dressel winning the skins final). He swam eight times in Match 1, doing five individual and three relays without a skins race. In all, he has won 11 individual races in three matches, plus a skins win. It’s a stunning display of range and speed, Dressel taking the college dual meet mindset and ramping it up to 11 against some of the best swimmers in the world.
A Roaring addition
Freya Anderson missed the London Roar’s first match. She returned in Match 5, taking three second-place finishes in freestyle and part of the Roar’s winning women’s freestyle relay.
But Anderson showed in ISL Match 8 just how valuable of an addition she is. Start with the swim in the 200 free, a British record of 1:52.60, masterfully working the back half to overcome Allison Schmitt and prevent a Cali Condors’ 1-2. She also won the 100 free in 51.87, out-dueling the Breakers’ Kasia Wasick, the 50 free champ.
But it’s the relays where Anderson is a game-changer. She put the Roar into clean water in the 400 women’s free relay in 51.88, which with the help of Anna Hopkin’s stellar anchor leg turned into a win. The 50.96 off the end of the mixed free relay helped London … well, Roar back for the win, out-splitting Cali’s Erika Brown by .54 to win by 12 hundredths of a second. That was the exact margin she had fallen short in Day 1’s medley relay, her furious 51.15 anchor gouging more than a second and a half out of Natalie Hinds’ lead for the Condors, just a tenth of a second shy of finishing the job.
“Freya for sure was a great addition to the team,” teammate Vini Lanza said. “She’s just a really, really good swimmer. Today we got to see her best in the relay. That finish was really amazing and really got the momentum going for us. It really, really helped to add her. I’m really, really looking forward to see how her and the rest of the team is going to do in the semifinals.”
Anderson was the team’s second-highest scorer at 37 points, behind only skins winner Adam Peaty (44.5) and tied for fourth overall in the match.
A skins race of champs
Lilly King of the Cali Condors; Photo Courtesy: Mike Lewis/ISL
It isn’t news that Lilly King stood behind the block wearing a smile Friday. It’s also long since ceased to be news that King got her hand to the wall first in an ISL race.
But the queen of breaststroke continues to amaze, this time with ISL Match 8 presenting her stiffest test against Alia Atkinson. King entered 6-for-6 this season across the three breaststroke distances. Atkinson was 4-for-4 in the 50 and 100. King made it 9-for-9, sweeping the three events, and her win in skins made it 30 wins in 30 ISL events all time.
The 100 breaststroke was a classic, Atkinson getting to the 50-meter wall first by a tenth. She appeared to surge even further ahead off 75-meter wall. But King reeled in the Jamaican, powering down the backstretch to touch in 1:03.39 to Atkinson’s 1:03.53. The times are within a small margin of King’s ISL record (1:03.00).
The skins race held a touch of anticlimax. The first round was the most exhilarating, with King on top, Atkinson second and six swimmers within .48 seconds, London sneaking two into semis. King was sub-30 at each level, a speed Atkinson only visited with 29.62 in the final. But King was ready, unleashing a 29.04 to win, within two tenths of the ISL record she set this year. Atkinson looked for a moment that she might get a jump off the wall, as she did briefly in the 100. But King was having none of it.
“She’s obviously just incredible to watch,” teammate Townley Haas said of King. “It’s hard to kind of put into words how great she is in the water, and then she gets out right away and walked over and started cheering with us. She’s all about the team, she’s a great person, lots of fun. She’s pretty incredible to watch.”
A medley of success for Tokyo
The Tokyo Frog Kings are 6-for-6 in 400 individual medley. Kosuke Hagino earned his third win in the men’s event at ISL Match 8, easily besting the field in 4:01.41, only a game Brandonn Almeida of the Breakers within five seconds. It avenged a loss in the 200 IM, where London’s Andreas Vazaios overcame Hagino on the last 50.
Yui Ohashi made it three wins from three in the women’s 400 IM, the time 4:25.53 in a controlled performance over Abbie Wood and Sydney Pickrem. Ohashi was denied her third straight 200 IM win by Melanie Margalis, the Condor’s final 50 outdistancing Ohashi, 2:04.18 to 2:05.04.
Tokyo has feasted in the IMs, with 12 of a possible 18 wins (Hagino has a 200 win, Runa Imai has two 100 IM wins, Vlad Morozov picked up a 100 IM victory). It’s a building block of success for an expansion franchise.
But if there’s one criticism, it’s the relays: Tokyo is 0-for-15 in that department, with double points and skins control at stake. Bolstering that area in Season 3 next year could turn Tokyo into a powerhouse.
Odds and Ends
Is it possible we witnessed the league’s two best women’s contingents in ISL Match 8? The depth of the 200 fly, won by Suzuka Hasegawa in a joust with Hali Flickinger, attests to that. Certainly the multi-part Atkinson-King duel does. As does a 100 IM where .81 second separates swimmers one through seven, Cali taking a 1-2 with Beata Nelson and Melanie Margalis. Certainly the Condors have a claim, and the in-meet machinations with Flickinger, Olivia Smoliga, Margalis, Nelson, Erika Brown and others speaks to enviable depth.
The final margin for Cali was 15.5 points. An unexpectedly pivotal swing came in the men’s 200 free, when the Condors grabbed a surprise 1-2. Townley Haas led the way with a lifetime best 1:41.58, within shouting distance of Ryan Lochte’s American record (1:41.08) from 2010. Second was the surprise, Kacper Majchrzak riding Haas’s wave to second, pipping Duncan Scott. It yielded 17 points to the Roar’s 10.
“The 200 free was pretty huge, obviously getting the max amount of points without the jackpot or anything,” Haas said. “It was also just awesome to be a part of. We were both so excited to look up and see the ‘Dors as 1-2. It was pretty cool to be a part of that.”
Wasick has been a surprise star for the Breakers (on a day when the Breakers bid a somewhat surprising farewell to Pieter Timmers). But don’t overlook Arina Surkova. She won the 50 fly, was third in the 100 fly and went 1-2 with Wasick in the 50 free, sneaking ahead of Maria Kameneva of London in a race where places two through six were separated by .13 seconds. Surkova was the Breakers’ leading scorer at 31.3 points, eighth overall and fifth among women in ISL Match 8.
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