{"id":444434,"date":"2020-08-20T09:24:19","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T16:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=444434"},"modified":"2020-08-20T09:24:19","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T16:24:19","slug":"kathleen-baker-talks-about-stresses-of-olympic-trials-managing-emotions-in-long-swim-meet-with-brett-hawke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/kathleen-baker-talks-about-stresses-of-olympic-trials-managing-emotions-in-long-swim-meet-with-brett-hawke\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathleen Baker Talks About Stresses of Olympic Trials & Managing Emotions in Long Swim Meet With Brett Hawke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former world record holder\u00a0Kathleen Baker\u00a0<\/strong>sat down with\u00a0Brett Hawke\u00a0<\/strong>on his podcast to talk about her career as she has been one of the top swimmers in the United States since she was an age grouper. Baker came from Swim MAC Carolina where she was swimming with\u00a0David Marsh’s\u00a0<\/strong>pro group when she was in high school in 2014. She started fully training with Team Elite when she was 16 and made the 2014 Pan Pac team before her senior year of high school.<\/p>\n

Baker talked about her mentors in\u00a0Katie Meili\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0Cammile Adams\u00a0<\/strong>(8:00) when she was growing up at Swim MAC and how it helped her in her career in high school. She discussed her Crohn’s Disease<\/a> (11:00) diagnosis in high school and how she was able to overcome those challenges to eventually make the Olympic team in 2016. Baker has since become an active spokesperson for Crohn’s Disease awareness as she continues to battle the life-long disease.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Baker swam three years at Cal Berkeley<\/a> for\u00a0Teri McKeever\u00a0<\/strong>(16:30) and she compared and contrasted the differences between training on an all-women’s team and training with a co-ed team (19:00).<\/p>\n

She is one of the top backstrokers in the world but had the fastest time in the world in the 200 IM in the early days of 2020, as she went through why it is important for her to switch up training specifics (19:50) and how she was able to swim a 2:08 at the 2018 Nationals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Baker made the 2016 Olympic Team<\/a> in the 100 backstroke with a second place finish (30:00) as she went through the stresses of moving through prelims, semi finals and finals, and how she rebounded from a poor heats swim. Six weeks later, she won the silver medal in the 100 backstroke at the Olympic Games and talked about what she did in between Trials and the Olympics (37:30) to improve to second in the world (41:00). She talked about the intensity of the ready room (44:00) in an individual final at the Olympic Games, and what her mindset was.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Baker led off the gold medal winning 4×100 medley relay at the Olympic Games and also swam in the same position the next year at the World Championships when they broke the world record.<\/p>\n