With this year’s short course yards USMS Masters’ National Championships being held in California, former big-name college and Olympic level swimmers are coming out of the woodwork for the competition.
Adrian is happy with his 50 free from short course yards US Masters National Championships (Mike Lewis, olavistaphotography.com)
In addition to former elites, the current post-grad training group from Cal has made the short drive to the George Haines International Swim Center for the event, and they’ve brought the 50 yard freestyle final alive early.
Nathan Adrian swam an 18.78 to win the men’s 25-29 age group. Amazingly enough, that’s not even a Masters’ Age Group Record: Fred Bousquet was an 18.67 in 2010.
After a successful Mesa Grand Prix, Adrian continues to fire on all cylinders in Santa Clara. That swim is just .12 seconds shy of Adrian’s lifetime best result in this distance, and is the 6th-best swim of his career (and fastest since graduating college).
Other recognizable winners include Chris Peterson, a former UCSB standout, who won the 18-24 age group in 19.97; former Cal swimmer Will Copeland, who was 2nd to Adrian in 19.84; and Anthony Ervin, Adrian’s training partner, who won the Men’s 30-34 age group in a new National Record of 19.33. That broke Nick Brunelli’s 2012 swim of 19.65.
Ervin was one of two swimmers to break a National Record in this event. Another former Olympic champion Josh Davis swam a 20.82 to win the 40-44 age group and break Michael Ross’ 2009 National Recor by .02 seconds. Matt Biondi won the 45-49 age group in 21.48 (still four-tenths off of the National Record), making yet another Olympic gold medalist atop a Masters’ 50 free podium in this event.
A full session recap will be available at its conclusion.
Full, live meet results available here.
Yeah, people tend to forget that Adrian’s best is a 1.32 in the 200 🙂 He could swim every distance decently I bet.
According to his Club Coach at Tacoma Swim Club (Jay Benner), one of Nathan’s best training sets in high school was 15×500 Descended and was also just under 30 minutes on a 3000 for time. Off of that training, he could swim a really fast 100 Free – Longcourse even in high school. Good training for a sprinter!
Speaking of sprinters, does anyone know if Morozov is training in Russia? Haven’t heard how he is doing out of college.
great swims all around!
but I am still waiting for someone to get down to Cielo range, around 18.4 – would be awesome!
I hope these post grads continue to “play” with Masters swimming… it’s nice to see what they can do in yards after years of LC focus. Just to give us some perspective.
Biondi , Ervin and Adrian ! what a trio of winners .
Sounds about right; that’s roughly equal to the 21.7 he did last week in Mesa. I was hoping he’d get a PB and beat Bousquet’s 25-29 age group record, though! Great to see Biondi back in competition too.
whoa.