Photo by Delly Carr<\/p>\n
By David Rieder<\/i><\/p>\n
CHARLESTON \u2212 Last week, Swimming World<\/i> announced Katie Ledecky as the female World Swimmer of the Year for the second consecutive year. Sure, no one will ever confuse Ledecky for someone that can jump into any event, any stroke and distance, and be an instant threat. If you want someone who can do that, look no further than Katinka Hosszu, who FINA announced on the same day as their top honoree.<\/p>\n
Hosszu made FINA happy this week at the Short Course World Championships in Doha, winning four gold medals, all in world record-time, and she also picked up two silvers. Hosszu spent the fall season pouncing short course world records between the FINA World Cup and World Champs as a follow-up to one of her best long course seasons. She finished with the top times in the world in both IMs, including a 2:08.21 in the 200 distance, and she also clocked the year ranked third in the 100 back.<\/p>\n
But still, Ledecky wins my vote for the top spot for 2014 \u2212 followed by Hosszu and then Sarah Sjostrom. The difference lies in the long course pool, the Olympic-sized version. Long course World Championships always gets everyone’s best shot, but the short course version misses half of the world’s top swimmers. Some, like Ledecky, hardly compete short course meters at all, so those records don’t always pack the same punch as their long course counterparts.<\/p>\n
Outside of Europe, which holds a short course titles meet every December, a large group of athletes hardly swim championship short course meets, so world records can go down in bunches, such as the 21-mark barrage this week. In contrast, only seven long course world records went down in all of 2014 \u2212 five of them to Ledecky alone. And in those swims, Ledecky redefined the landscape of women’s distance swimming.<\/p>\n
Between two swims, Ledecky took eight seconds off of her own 1500 free world record, and she paced the world rankings by 27 seconds. She chopped off almost three seconds from her previous mark in the 800 free at the end of a little-known mid-summer meet in Texas. And in the 400, she broke one of the most intimidating and notoriously suit-aided long course marks on the books, Federica Pellegrini’s 400 free.<\/p>\n
Sure, Hosszu impressed in 2014 with her prowess in so many events and her inability to get tired. But Hosszu is by no means dominant in any event, except for perhaps the 200 IM. But Ledecky is miles ahead in all three distance events right now, and she looks like a legitimate World title contender for the 200 free next year. And even when she’s not at her sharpest, as was the case at this week’s Short Course Nationals, she can still drop a 1650 ten seconds faster than anyone else \u2212 including American distance greats like Janet Evans, Brooke Bennett, Kate Ziegler, and Katie Hoff \u2212 has ever swum.<\/p>\n
On the men’s side,<\/b> Swimming World’s<\/i> pick for top male swimmer of the year picked up just one gold medal, but the win might have been the most meaningful one of the meet. He took down four-time defending Ryan Lochte in the 200 IM, knocking off the oft-honored American by almost a full second. The race actually marked the only head-to-head in the 200 IM between the two this year after Lochte swam in the B-final at Pan Pacs this summer.<\/p>\n
The pair actually clocked the same time in winning their respective finals time at Pan Pacs, but Hagino ended up clocking the world’s top time with his 1:55.34 from the Asian Games. Lochte finished more than a second ahead of his Japanese rival in the event at the Long Course Worlds in 2013, but Hagino managed to turn the tables in Doha, despite Lochte being recognized as one of the best short course swimmers ever.<\/p>\n
Lochte will swim a limited program at Worlds next summer, having just qualified for the 100 and 200 free and 200 IM, while Hagino will have a full slate, which could consist of the 200 and 400 free and both backstrokes in addition to the IMs. Their 200 IM showdown could be one of the most intriguing showdowns of the week. Hagino has supplanted him as the premier male swimmer in the world, and a 200 IM win in Kazan next summer would be a symbolic passing-of-the-torch.<\/p>\n
Five years ago,<\/b> FINA banned fullbody and non-textile suits after a two-year onslaught of records, many of which still remain on the books. Almost nothing survived that streak, so seeing the date “2002” in the record books seems like it must be a typo. Indeed, a pair of short course yards American records survive from March 22, 2002, when Natalie Coughlin posted a 50.01 in the 100 fly and then an hour later, 49.97 in the 100 back.<\/p>\n
In almost 13 years, no one has been able to touch the marks of the then-Cal sophomore. At the time she set them, the 100 back mark was most extraordinary, because no one else had even swum under 52 at that point. During the suit era, Gemma Spofforth broke into the 50-second range with a 50.46 range. Two Cal Bears from a later era, Cindy Tran (50.31 in 2012) and Rachel Bootsma (50.12 in 2013) would get closer, but the 49.97 kept puffing its chest out.<\/p>\n
This weekend, Courtney Bartholomew came as close as they come to joining Coughlin in the exclusive sub-50 club. Her 50.01 leading off Virginia’s 400 medley relay at the Georgia Invite left her painfully close to the record, but in another chance in the individual event a night later, she couldn’t punch it in, clocking a 50.39. Records that old and that revered can be elusive, so even though Bartholomew and others (such as Bootsma) have a whole season ahead of them, that relay on Friday night may have been the best chance gone by.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Photo by Delly Carr By David Rieder CHARLESTON \u2212 Last week, Swimming World announced Katie Ledecky as the female World Swimmer of the Year for the second consecutive year. Sure,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":107788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"After Doha, It's Still Ledecky Over Hosszu for Swimmer of the Year","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,17,10],"tags":[25522,35044,33340,111,32536,25031,25129,1776,26643,19138,32196],"class_list":["post-116710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-commentary","category-world","tag-courtney-bartholomew","tag-federica-pellegrini","tag-gemma-spofforth","tag-janet-evans","tag-kate-ziegler","tag-katie-ledecky","tag-katinka-hosszu","tag-natalie-coughlin","tag-rachel-bootsma","tag-ryan-lochte","tag-sarah-sjostrom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n