United States’ Missy Franklin checks her time during a women’s 200-meter backstroke heat during the swimming competitions at the 2016 Summer Olympics, Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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Asked by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Ann Killion about her Rio Games, Franklin answered, “right now, it sucks”. This after an arduous Olympic trials where she failed to qualify for the 100 backstroke and struggled to punch her ticket for two individual events and a relay – a dramatic reduction from the seven events on her London dance card. Franklin has continued to be supportive for her teammates despite her own disappointment. Maya DiRado, Allison Schmitt and Leah Smith joined Ledecky in prime time, with Franklin, Melanie Margalis and Cierra Runge awarded medals for afternoon duties.
Missy Franklin, who had qualified second in the 200 free at USA trials six weeks ago, did not get to swim the final, adding to a disappointing week for the darling of the London Games.
She did collect a gold in the 4×200 freestyle relay on Wednesday but, again, was absent from the final having been dropped after the heats.
Missy Franklin was one of the stars of the U.S. swimming team at the 2012 Summer Games in London, but she has been unable to recapture some of that magic in Rio.
Franklin will not go home empty-handed. She gave little indication of turning things around in the preliminaries, managing only the 11th-best time at 2 minutes, 9.36 seconds. “I gave it everything I had and it just wasn’t there”. “She just told me that it’s going to be OK, and that’s all I needed to hear”.
Compounding the pain on Monday was Franklin’s belief that she did nothing wrong during the race or in her training.
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As she struggled to keep up in the 200m freestyle semifinal, an NBC’s announcer said in disbelief, “There’s no better racer than Missy. Just disappointed that I let the team down”. He’s going to transform me and my life into doing something from all of this. “I don’t think I would have ever come to that realization without something like this”.
