The A-Finals for Saturday night at the 2014 Santa Clara Grand Prix have come through with a clean sheet, showing no scratches from the preliminary top 9’s.
Saturday’s finals heat sheets available here.
There were a few noteable B-Final scratches when the psych sheets were released, however. The biggest among those is SwimMAC’s Tyler Clary, who dropped out of the B-Final in the 200 free. He came through 12th in prelims in a 1:51.03. For Clary, that’s a fairly good time for a prelims swim in June, and on his personal best one of the 15-fastest 200 frees of his career.
But in finals, Clary will be focused on his 200 back, where he will be racing for both cash and for points in the overall Grand Prix standings. There, he’s the 2nd seed behind Arkady Vyatchanin, with those two being the heavy favorites in finals. There’s a few others, including Jacob Pebley who was under two minutes most of last week at the Mare Nostrum, who are expected to drop time in the final. Vyatchanin, though, doesn’t have a big international meet to taper for this summer, so expect him to go something really fast here on Saturday night.
The whole of the men’s 200 free final being in-tact means that Michael Phelps will be racing that after scratching the final of the same race in Charlotte. He’s the 5th seed in 1:49.61 in a field loaded with both domestic and international swimmers who will probably be racing in Rio in 2016.
The only other B-Final scratches came from Kathleen Baker, who dropped the 200 back B-Final, and Curtis Ogren, who dropped the 200 back B-Final. That would have been Baker’s only swim on Saturday, while Ogren will have the 400 IM B-Final early in the session to focus on instead.
