Guest commentary by Pamela Roberts<\/i><\/p>\n
With the Winter Olympics is Sochi, Russia still in full swing, my (and maybe some other people\u2019s) attention is diverted to another place this coming weekend, far away from snow and ice, slopes and skating rinks. Starting Thursday, I\u2019ll be back in front of my laptop, watching the Arena Grand Prix in Orlando. I\u2019m going to watch the comeback of Ryan Lochte after he has been absent for the last few months due to an injury.<\/p>\n
Let me start this little thing with a confession: I have been sitting here for days, staring at a blank page, not knowing what to write. Classic case of writer\u2019s block. Which is quite ironic considering I have a hard time shutting up when it comes to one Ryan Lochte.<\/p>\n
I had been hoping to write something about what I was expecting of Ryan\u2019s return to the pool. But the honest answer is that I don\u2019t know. It came early for sure, especially after the first reports that surfaced after Lochte\u2019s injury predicted him to only start practice in the pool in February. And, now it is February and Ryan is set to swim his first meet after being forced to take a break.<\/p>\n
Another, and maybe the main reason for the aforementioned \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d is that maybe no one knows; except for Ryan Lochte himself, his coach and his training partners at SwimMAC Carolina.<\/p>\n
In a commentary a while back I used the word \u2018unpredictable\u2019 in connection with Ryan and I\u2019m using it again right now.<\/p>\n
Whatever we expect from Ryan Lochte, chances are he will step up and do anything but what we expected. If we think he\u2019ll take it easy, he\u2019ll probably end up swimming several events each day and he\u2019ll go at them like he\u2019s never been away in the first place. Swimming an IM after a knee injury is most likely not on the list of enjoyable things, but then again, we\u2019re talking about Ryan Lochte. I would not even be surprised if he ends up swimming the 400m IM again later this season.<\/p>\n
One thing is for sure though, it\u2019s not going to be easy for Lochte. Conor Dwyer dominated in one of Lochte\u2019s signature events, the 200m IM, during the Arena Grand Prix in Austin, while Ryan Murphy could, much like last season, give Lochte a run for his money in the 200m backstroke.<\/p>\n
In the 100m backstroke, the field with Matt Grevers, Arkady Vyatchanin and Lochte\u2019s teammate Nick Thoman is already pretty good and at the moment, there seems to be no way around Tom Shields in the 100m butterfly, an event that Lochte just added to his schedule last year ahead of the World Championships.<\/p>\n
And, the list of top-class swimmers in both the 100m and 200m freestyle already read like an Olympic line-up with names such as Yannick Agnel, Nathan Adrian, Jimmy Feigen, Anthony Ervin, Cullen Jones, Matt McLean and, once more even though he didn\u2019t swim the 200m freestyle in Austin, Conor Dwyer.<\/p>\n
I definitely know that I am looking forward to see Ryan swim again. Everyone mentioned above made his absence less critical, but I can\u2019t deny that there was something missing while watching the past Grand Prix meets and who knows how the Duel in the Pool might have ended had Ryan been there.<\/p>\n
So who knows what we can expect of Ryan Lochte? The main part is that we don\u2019t have to wait another few months to actually see it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guest commentary by Pamela Roberts With the Winter Olympics is Sochi, Russia still in full swing, my (and maybe some other people\u2019s) attention is diverted to another place this coming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":48376,"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":"","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],"tags":[54061,5223,25028,25030,452,185,24850,25027,1499,25033,4748,25055,12011,24854,6302,25038,25398,189,25132,147,19138,25269,24693,142,25026,24979,25424,3399],"class_list":["post-49487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-commentary","tag-2014-arena-grand-prix-orlando","tag-anthony-ervin","tag-arena-grand-prix","tag-arkady-vyatchanin","tag-austin","tag-coach","tag-conor-dwyer","tag-cullen-jones","tag-injury","tag-jimmy-feigen","tag-knee-injury","tag-lochte","tag-matt-grevers","tag-matt-mclean","tag-michael-phelps","tag-nathan-adrian","tag-nick-thoman","tag-orlando","tag-pamela-roberts","tag-russia","tag-ryan-lochte","tag-ryan-murphy","tag-sports","tag-swimming","tag-the-arena-grand-prix","tag-the-winter-olympics","tag-tom-shields","tag-writer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n