Morning Splash: Digging Through the Pre-Trials Notebook

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

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By David Rieder

It’s the Olympic year. Yeah, there are a lot of swim meets around the country every year, but this year, everyone is just a little more focused, a little bit more excited.

Since the beginning of 2016, I’ve already been to 14 different swim meets, covering 28 days total. At said meets, I’ve had a chance to talk to some of America’s top swimmers, including Ryan Lochte, Lilly King and Ryan Murphy. I’ve spoken on-camera to Kelsi Worrell four times and Leah Smith five. I’ve also interviewed five different Olympic hopefuls on the phone for feature stories.

Olympic Trials has come up in nearly every interview I’ve done. How can it not? This is without a doubt the biggest meet on American soil, and it only comes around every four years.

How about a quick look through some Trials-related highlights that might have slipped through the cracks the first time?

*Caeleb Dressel swam rather fast at the NCAA championships in March, as you may remember. He posted the fastest times ever in both the 50 (18.20) and 100-yard free (40.46) and also finished second in the 100 fly. But just an hour after he wrapped up his sophomore campaign as a Florida Gator, he made clear NCAAs was not his end goal.

“That was my focus this year. [Florida head coach Gregg] Troy said if we swim good short course, that’s just a bonus. It’s been long course focus this year. I’m going to go back to the hotel, eat some pizza and then I want to get back in the water.”

In a press conference in early May, Dressel explained how one race in particular from NCAAs gives him confidence going into Olympic Trials—and it was the one race he didn’t win.

“It used to be, when we raced 100 fly, I’d be out lights-out and just die so bad. So this time it was so weird—I turn at the 50, and I’m facing towards him, and I’m like, ‘Oh, he’s ahead of me right now.’ I wasn’t used to that. It’s just nice to see your training in action. Being able to run down a 200 butterflyer like Joseph [Schooling] makes me feel good, especially leading into the big pool, because it shows I still had a little bit left in the tank.”

Dressel likely will not even swim the 100 fly at Trials, but he hopes that his improved endurance will help significantly down the stretch in the 100 free. He swam a lifetime best in the 100 free (48.74) earlier this month and figures to take off another chunk of time Omaha.

*Leah Smith won both the 500 and 1650 free at the NCAA Championships in March, but the 200 free has been her most successful event internationally—she swam the second leg on the American 800 free relay at the World Championships last summer and won a gold medal for her efforts. But in late January after her Virginia Cavaliers swam in a tri-meet in Chapel Hill, N.C., Smith explained that her training is geared towards the longer races year-round.

“In 2013 before World Champ Trials, my coach and I thought it would be a good idea to train more for the 200 because I wanted to make the relay team in that. It pretty much backfired. I don’t know if I just had a bad meet or the training was off, but I think that I should have been confident in what my training was for my other events. My 200 can still be really fast if I train for the 400.”

That strategy has massively paid off so far this season as she posted lifetime-best times in the 200 (1:56.64), 400 (4:03.33) and 800 free (8:24.87) at the Arena Pro Swim series meet in Indianapolis earlier this month. Her 400 time currently ranks second in the world.

*Kathleen Baker returned home to Charlotte, N.C., following the conclusion of her freshman year at Cal to train with SwimMAC’s Team Elite for her final preparations for Olympic Trials. Her debut season at the college level was not without both its highlights—including her second-place finish in the 200 IM at NCAAs—and its bumps in the road—she missed out on the top-eight in both backstroke events—but Baker feels like the entire experience was massively beneficial.

“You just learn to adapt more. This is the first time I’ve had a big change in the program I’ve been doing since I was about 15, so it’s definitely been different and exciting and fun to learn from new people. I got to race the best in the world in my events every day in practice which was so fun. I think I’ve just learned a lot from being around people my own age too.”

Baker believes she is better long course than short course, and she’s hoping to be in contention in both backstrokes as well as the 200 IM at Olympic Trials. On paper, her best chance to make the team will be in the 100 back, the event in which she finished eighth at Worlds last summer.

“I think it’s going to be a 59-low to make it. I know it’s going to be pretty competitive. I feel like it’s 50 free-level of a crapshoot coming out because so many people are right around that 59-mid-range. I think it’s just going to depend on who can swim the best in the finals because that’s when it really matters. I think it takes a lot of effort to know how to swim prelims, semis and finals because it’s something that we don’t really do in the U.S. very often.”

*Connor Jaeger goes into this year’s Olympic Trials much more seasoned than the 21-year-old rookie that finished second in the 1500 four years ago. He is more comfortable swimming the 1500 free—an event in which he now holds the American record—and he knows how not to miscount his laps. He and his coaches have learned how to manage the five-day gap between the 400 and 1500.

But Jaeger admits that he still gets caught up in the exciting atmosphere that is finals at Olympic Trials—even though his coaches will encourage him to stay in during the days before his races.

“U.S. Trials is the most exciting meet, maybe the world but definitely in American. And we’re gonna go, and we’re gonna watch some really fast swimming, and we’re gonna have deck passes to that meet. It’s going to be the most exciting meet, and just gonna be a lot of fun to watch.

“I think it’s harder for people to say they’re not going to go. I think everyone wants to go. Everyone wants to go to the sessions and watch, and normally that’s why you have coaches—the coaches say, ‘No, you need to stay back and stay in your hotel room. It is hard to strike a balance, and I think it’s really easy to tip over. I think it’s easier to go to all the sessions, cheer a lot, and it’s harder to be accountable for yourself and stay back.”

*David Marsh has gained notoriety for his work with Auburn and now with SwimMAC’s Team Elite, and he will be the head coach for the U.S. women this summer in Rio. But Marsh has been known to utilize unconventional training methods, some of which Cullen Jones and Madison Kennedy demonstrated in the video below. Take a look:

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