{"id":499090,"date":"2022-03-21T05:22:38","date_gmt":"2022-03-21T12:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=499090"},"modified":"2022-03-21T05:22:38","modified_gmt":"2022-03-21T12:22:38","slug":"after-trials-illness-setbacks-luca-urlando-is-ready-and-realistic-for-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/after-trials-illness-setbacks-luca-urlando-is-ready-and-realistic-for-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"After Trials, Illness Setbacks, Luca Urlando is Ready and Realistic for 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

After Trials, Illness Setbacks, Luca Urlando is Ready and Realistic for 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Luca Urlando<\/strong> didn\u2019t have the summer of 2021 he dreamed of. November and December weren\u2019t great, either, to be honest.<\/p>\n

But for a soon-to-be 20-year-old, Urlando is beyond his years in practice handling adversity. Some of it is the California calm the Sacramento native exudes, some of it the honed mentality to match his elite speed. As he approaches the NCAAs Championships, Urlando is confident in how he\u2019s calibrating his goals for the busy year ahead.<\/p>\n

With more than two weeks out of the water in the fall<\/a> \u2013 first for a bout of the flu, then an emergency appendectomy with another illness tacked on \u2013 Urlando is being realistic. He trained fully for barely six weeks by the time he took home SEC Championships Swimmer of the Meet in February.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s reason to be encouraged, especially since his 2022 goals position NCAAs as a stepping stone for what he hopes is a place at World Championships this summer.<\/p>\n

\"Georgia

Luca Urlando’ Photo Courtesy: Chamberlain Smith \/ Georgia Athletics<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty focused on how good I want to become,\u201d Urlando said recently. \u201cI\u2019ve dealt with a lot of injuries and stuff, so I\u2019m just honestly proud of where I am right now. It would be awesome, and I\u2019m really excited to compete with other conference champions, but I\u2019m not holding myself to too high of expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Urlando has lived a lot of swimming life in his short senior career. When you\u2019re 17 and find your name in sentences that includes phrases like, \u201cthe first American since Michael Phelps<\/strong>,\u201d time has a way of accelerating, ever swim dissected and magnified.<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t brought a ton of luck his way. There was a shoulder injury to start 2020<\/a>, preceding the COVID-19-related collapse of reality. All that was in the past when Trials rolled around, though that meet didn\u2019t play out the way Urlando hoped, bringing the double heartache of finishing third in both butterfly events. In the 200, it was by .09 seconds, overtaken by Gunnar Bentz\u2019s<\/strong> final-50 charge<\/a>. He was .55 shy of Tom Shields<\/strong> in the 100 to miss out Tokyo. (He also scratched the 200 freestyle final<\/a> after finishing sixth in prelims and semis, a spot that would\u2019ve gotten him a relay swim in Tokyo.)<\/p>\n

Urlando felt good about how he rebounded emotionally into his second autumn in Athens. Time away from the pool in the summer allowed him to reenergize, bringing back a more detailed and intentional focus on all the aspects of performance. But the December health issues dented that momentum.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to come out of the summer better than I ever was, which includes training and approaching lifting in a different way,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I thought I was doing a pretty good job with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Urlando\u2019s start to college swimming has not disappointed. He holds Georgia records<\/a> in three individual events and top-four times in six, no small feat at a program with such illustrious history. Add in relays and Urlando is in the top four of 11 different events.<\/p>\n

He finaled twice at NCAAs in individual events last year, taking fourth in the 200 fly and eighth in the 100 fly, to go with a program of five relays. The Bulldogs finished in the top 10 in four of them.<\/p>\n

If the lens of SECs is instructive, Urlando seems poised for a jump. He won the 200 fly as a freshman at conference champs, which this year turned into<\/a> titles in the 100 fly, 200 fly<\/a> and 200 individual medley on the way to the SEC Commissioner\u2019s Trophy as the top point scorer.<\/p>\n

One helpful addition is training alongside Matt Sates,<\/strong> the South African world junior record holder who joined the program in January. With considerable overlap in their events, they not only complement each other in the meet program \u2013 Sates won the 200 free and 500 free at SECs with silver in the 200 fly \u2013 but push each other daily.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s awesome,\u201d Urlando said. \u201cHe\u2019s a great training partner, probably one of the fastest people I\u2019ve ever trained with consistently. I think it\u2019s a pretty big advantage to everyone, all the teammates that get to be around him and train with him, I think that\u2019s a huge advantage, more so than the times he goes at meets.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressure is something Urlando is asked about often<\/a>. It\u2019s been an unavoidably constant conversation topic since he downed the 200 fly age-group record belonging to Phelps in 2019<\/a>, the year he helped the U.S. set three relay records at the World Junior Championships<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Urlando isn\u2019t swimming to be anyone other than himself. He\u2019s gained big-meet experience, learning how to compartmentalize and relax. In an odd way, the injuries have helped, reinforcing the bounds of what is in his control and when to let go of external factors.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how he\u2019ll approach NCAAs. He hoping to contend for titles, but he\u2019s also aware of the broader goals he\u2019s sketched for 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I swim for myself, so if there\u2019s any type of stress, it\u2019s usually stress that I\u2019ve applied to myself,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s an honor to be compared next to someone like Michael Phelps, so I don\u2019t really see the pressure involved with it more than as a good thing.\u00a0 \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s still a lot of pressure that I would put upon myself, but it gets easier, knowing that I\u2019m confident in my abilities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After Trials, Illness Setbacks, Luca Urlando is Ready and Realistic for 2022 Luca Urlando didn\u2019t have the summer of 2021 he dreamed of. November and December weren\u2019t great, either, to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8367,"featured_media":477179,"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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6,7],"tags":[130437,248,67770,124212,330,130111,46364],"class_list":["post-499090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-college","category-usa","tag-2022-ncaa-championships","tag-georgia","tag-luca-urlando","tag-matt-sates","tag-ncaa-championships","tag-ncaa-college-swimming-championships-2022-men-di","tag-sec-swimming"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\nAfter Trials, Illness Setbacks, Luca Urlando is Ready and Realistic for 2022<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Luca Urlando didn\u2019t have the summer of 2021 he dreamed of. 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