Katie Grimes Swims 4:31 400 IM at Fran Crippen Swim Meet of Champions; Fourth-Fastest American Ever

Katie Grimes -- Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Katie Grimes Swims 4:31 400 IM at Fran Crippen Swim Meet of Champions; Fourth-Fastest American Ever

The international standard in the 400 IM was reset this month with Summer McIntosh swimming a time of 4:25.87 at the Canadian Trials to break Katinka Hosszu’s seven-year-old world record in the event. There is a great deal of separation now between McIntosh and the rest of the world’s best in the 400 IM, but the swimmer who took silver behind McIntosh at last year’s World Championships has pulled off a big drop of her own, with some record-breaking seemingly on the horizon.

Katie Grimes swam her lifetime best in the longer medley race Saturday at the Fran Crippen Swim Meet of Champions in Mission Viejo, Calif. Grimes swam a mark of 4:31.81, which put her 12 seconds clear of the field while beating her previous best time of 4:32.67 from her silver-medal-winning swim last summer in Budapest. A comparison of Grimes’ splits between this race and last year’s performance show improvement on the backstroke and freestyle legs while breaststroke remains her weak stroke.

April 2023: 28.62, 1:00.66 (32.04), 1:35.06 (34.40), 2:08.88 (33.82), 2:50.02 (41.14), 3:31.60 (41.58), 4:02.26 (30.66), 4:31.81 (29.55)
June 2022: 28.26, 1:00.22 (31.96), 1:34.91 (34.69), 2:09.30 (34.39), 2:50.33 (41.03), 3:31.78 (41.45), 4:02.69 (30.90), 4:32.67 (29.99)

The time makes Grimes the 13th-fastest swimmer ever in the event and the fourth-fastest American, behind only Katie Hoff (4:31.12), Maya DiRado (4:31.15) and Elizabeth Beisel (4:31.27). Hoff’s American record, which was the world record when she set it at the 2008 Olympic Trials, has survived through Olympic-silver-medal-winning swims by Beisel (2012) and DiRado (2016) at successive Olympic Games, but perhaps Grimes is putting herself in position to finally lower that 15-year-old mark.

Grimes swam her 400 IM best time after racing the 200 free earlier in the session. In that event, Grimes went head-to-head with Sandpipers of Nevada teammate Bella Sims, who anchored the U.S. women’s 800 free relay to a world title last year, and Sims held off the fast-finishing Grimes, 1:57.63 to 1:57.85. Sims was just off her lifetime best of 1:57.53 (she has been as fast as 1:54.60 on a relay split) while Grimes beat her previous best of 1:58.22. That makes three lifetime bests for Grimes this weekend after swimming a 2:08.77 in the 200 fly Friday.

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Janice Ramer

1 year ago

Go get’em Katie!