Michael Phelps during the men’s 100m butterfly finals in the U.S. Olympic swimming team trials at CenturyLink Center.
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The Americans are counting on it happening again next month in Rio after not setting a single world record during the eight-day selection meet.
Michael Phelps will bring down the curtain on his stellar Olympic career in Rio, heading a USA swimming team packed with newcomers eager to stamp themselves the future of the sport. “Oh, my turns are bad.’ It was just kind of cool to look back and see how much I’ve improved over the last four years”, Ledecky said during the press conference.
Clearly, there is cause for concern.
“We’re going to have to improve for sure”, David Marsh, coach of the USA women’s team, said Sunday.
Heading into his fifth and final Olympics, Phelps, 31, has said he wants to swim another personal best at least once before he retires after Rio.
Jaeger won a silver medal in the 1,500 at last year’s world championships. “It’s frustrating to not be able to go the same time or faster than I did last year, especially because I think I’m in better shape than I was last year”.
When his longtime coach, Bob Bowman, asked for a game plan before the race, Phelps kept it simple.
“(I can) just tell them what it will be like”, Ledecky said during the press conference.
Ledecky and former Stanford swimmer Maya DiRado won their third individual events on the next-to-last night of the trials, while former Cal swimmer Nathan Adrian won the 50 freestyle, touching ahead of friend Anthony Ervin (Cal).
This is DiRado’s last season of swimming, and she was nearly one full second ahead of the defending Olympic champion and world record-holder, winning in 2:06.90. In January, she lowered her own world mark in the 800-meter freestyle at a meet in Austin, Texas, where she set world-leading times in the 200 and 400 freestyles.
The meet finished with only two American men, Josh Prenot (200 breast) and Ryan Murphy (100 back), at the top of the world rankings, and just two women in Katie Ledecky (200, 400, 800 free) and Lilly King (100 breast) atop the lists.
“I’m still the youngest Olympic as of now on the team, which is kind of amusing because I do have a lot more experience than I did four years ago, and I was the youngest on the team then”, Ledecky said during a press conference after she won the 800 freestyle at the 2016 Olympic swimming trials. “I came to this meet in 2012 as a 16-year-old just making the cuts, just came to participate”. Reigning Olympic champions Matt Grevers and Tyler Clary failed to make the team.
Phelps was in the head of the other seven contestants as they knew the 31-year-old icon, the victor of 18 career Olympic gold medals and the defending Olympic champion in the event, wanted to go out on top. Neither Wilimovsky nor Jaeger is among the world’s fastest in the 1500 this year, though, which makes a podium trip a long shot at best.
She hopes to become the first swimmer since 1968 to complete the hat-trick of Olympic gold medals in the distance events.
“I think the Japanese, everyone, Brazil, Hungary, we’ve all been racing against each other so many times that we know it’s going to be a dog fight till the end”.
“I feel like people bought into, ‘OK, this is their last go-round, it’s time for me to step up.’ The doors opened and some young people sensed that”.
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