At the age of 23 Australian Emily Seebohm is a seasoned veteran on the Australian National Team. Seebohm has a long history of success, but is still on the hunt for individual Olympic gold.
At the age of 14 Seebohm made her first national team qualifying for the 2007 World Championships in the 100 backstroke. In Melbourne she finished fourth in the individual event and winning gold in the 4 x 100 medley relay.
The very next year at the Australian National Championships she broke the world record in the 50 backstroke and became the first Australian to swim a sub one minute 100 backstroke. Later that year she finished 9th at the 2008 Beijing Olympics while collecting gold in the 4 x 100 medley relay.
At the 2009 World Championships she finished third in the 100 backstroke. In 2010 Seebohm showed her versatility winning the Pan Pacific Championships in both the 100 backstroke and 200 IM as well as bringing home eight medals at the Commonwealth Games (gold – 100 backstroke, 4 x 100 freestyle and medley relays, silver – 100 freestyle and 200 IM, bronze – 50 and 200 backstroke and the 50 butterfly).
In the prelims of the 100 backstroke at the 2012 Olympics Seebohm set a new Olympic record in the event posting a time of 58.23. She went on to win the silver medal in the event.
She followed up her Olympic performance by winning silver in the 100 backstroke and the 4 x 100 medley relay at the World Championships in Barcelona.
In 2014 Seebohm once again had great success at both the Commonwealth Games and Pan Pacific Championships winning gold in the 100 backstroke at both competitions.
2015 presented her with a few pretty big challenges. In April her long time coach Matt Brown took a job in Melbourne. Not willing to make the move Seebohm had to find a new coach to work with, eventually choosing David Lush the Head Coach of the Brisbane Grammar School
Then in the middle of May she dislocated her knee.
Seebohm used those challenges as motivation and took her performance to another level winning gold in both the 100 and 200 backstroke in Kazan and has not looked back since.
“The success from Kazan for me was a mix of many things that went wrong in my preparation from the change of coaching to the dislocated knee,” Seebohm told SwimSwam.
“Nothing went right, but it made me so much tougher and work so much harder because I had lost so much time.”
“Getting a good plan from my new coach David Lush played the biggest roll in Kazan!”
It was in June that Seebohm decided to join forces with Lush who had been an assistant to her former coach Matt Brown from 2004-08.
Although she was familiar with Lush as a coach and his program the transition was still not an easy one, “For me the biggest challenge with changing coaches was leaving a great squad that I had been a part of for 13 years, including the coaching.”
“The relationship I that I had with Matt was very strong.”
One of the things that has made a difference in her training is the specificity of her new program, “I think the difference with Matt and Lushy is that Lushy has a different angle to look at and we do sets that are so specific to the things I do when I race.”
Seebohm has had incredible success on the World Cup circuit since Kazan and has now swum under 59 seconds in the 100 backstroke nine times in 2015. She also sits atop of the world rankings with a time of 58.59 which she recorded at the World Cup stop in Beijing.
2015-2016 LCM Women 100 BACK
SEEBOHM
58.34
View Top 26»2 Katinka
HOSSZUHUN 58.45 08/08 3 Mie
NIELSENDEN 58.73 05/19
Since Kazan Seebohm feels once again the reason for her success is the race specific training that her and Lush have employed, “Everything I do when I race is just a product of what I do with my training,” explained Seebohm.
“Since coming back from Kazan I have worked so hard on making my training as good as it can be!”
One of the things she has been focusing on since Kazan is improving her starts and turns, “I have been focusing a lot on my starts and turns and to monitor that we get QAS in to film our skills and give feedback.”
Seebohm was willing to share one her favourite sets which she does on a weekly basis:
4 x 35 m at max speed hitting the level of lactate that would match the first 50 meters of her 100.
1 x 100 freestyle hitting the same heart rate that she would have in the first 50 or 100 in her 200 backstroke.
If the set is focused on the 200 they will then do a 100 at the speed of the second half of her race and if they are aiming at the 100 she will swim 50 at the speed of the second half of her race.
Any inferences to suggest doping accusations at Emily are regretted. I am a huge proponent of clean sport and its important to ask these questions. Similar questions were raised about Hosszu earlier in the year. Dropping 58.5 mid season 100back is huge. Not even Coughlin could manage that at her peak in a speeding lzr. Fully rested in Rio Emily will easily break 58sec. Good luck to her competition
That 58.59 realistically isn’t much of a drop from the 58.8s & 58.7s she swam elsewhere in the series. Had she dropped in a series of 58lows, then THAT would most certainly be “what the hells happening here” stuff. Certainly incredible consistency in any case.
Maybe what’s happened/happening with Seebohm is just a case of her finally “getting her act fully together” both inside and outside the pool and finally becoming fully “professional” in these regards instead of the incredibly talented but “flaky” performer previously.
I will take issue with your pronouncement that she will definitely break 58sec. World records come …… when they come and whilst she is most definitely numero uno candidate to break the W100BACK record; we… Read more »
Emily was on a major roll in 2010 . Then like many was a bit off at Dehli .Then in early 2011 she was on fire .Anyone who saw her at Nth Sydney in Jan 2011 could recognise she was on the verge of greatness. Then a genuine case of SARS .
Emily dug very deep & made a run to Shanghai & still got in the 59s . She did not have to do that & it demonstrates her drive . The 58.2 in heats at Beijing was one of those moments , however not all that surprising when she swam 60.4 as a 14 year old in 2007 Worlds.
The difference in 2015-15 was a complete change… Read more »
Sure you don’t mean 58.2 in London heats rather than Beijing ? She actually did make somewhat of a mess of prelims in Beijing and missed the finals then redeemed herself somewhat with her medley relay swim.
Dropping the 200IM this year has probably been a blessing. It WILL be interesting to see how her FS tracks this year and whether we may see a further step down from 53high towards 53mid which would certainly strengthen her hand, and the team’s, for the 4×100.
It
commonwombat I agree but are you suspicious of Katie ledecky. Her times are not normal. I,m not insinuating anything. Just asking?
I,m not suspicious but I could be wrong.
Australian sport is much cleaner than the US though.
Japan is almost squeaky clean.
Hhmm, not appreciably to be honest if you look as a percentage. The professional sports in both USA & AUS can be seen as having some major issues.
When it comes to Olympic sports; basically much of a muchness. Both have a propensity to pontificate but both have had their bad apples. USA has had some major names in recent years but AUS has had its quota of offenders; although very few have been “top bracket” (a couple of track cyclists in the 90s probably the biggest names).
Re JAP, that may be correct however they have their share of ‘skeletons in the closet’ with regards to some draconian regimes that used to be in place in certain sports; and… Read more »
But at least australian sport is much cleaner than the US and Japanese sport is very clean.
No Japanese athlete has tested positive in the history of the olympics. Quite a record.
I was addressing bad anon by the way.
With response to Carlo, AUS sport ISN’T quite as squeaky clean as you would paint it. When it comes to “professional sports’ such as the football codes, then there has been plenty of murk in recent years with regards to the use of supplements plus abuse of prescription drugs.
With regards to Olympic sports, there has never been any clear evidence of sports-wide doping programs. There have, however, been some individual transgressions in track cycling, weightlifting and track and field. With swimming, the most noticeable cases have been the Sam Riley headache tablet back in 2005 (which looks to have been a legit “inadvertent”) and the more recent Kylie Palmer which WAS more concerning as it involved traces of a… Read more »
BAD ANON, I must agreed with Carlo – red card for that comment. Your comment is completely inappropriate and disrespectful to elite level swimmers the world over. Lets not try to denigrate athletes’ performances with references to PED’s especially when they are opening sharing interesting facts about themselves.
BAD ANON how many Australian athletes have tested positive for doping in the history of the olympics?
In sports australia and Japan are two of the cleanest big population nations. Both nations are cleaner than the US overall ( in sports )
I hope Phelps is clean
Ledecky too.
She is way ahead of Franklin. I think the time at Cal might have hurt Franklin’s long course swimming. It will be interesting to see if Todd can get her back into form. I think it will take a world record to win the 100 back in Rio.
I am happy for Seebohm. It was so heartbreaking to see her break down in tears for getting the silver. Her prelim time would have won. She was young and filled with dreams and crushed by an ok finals performance. Haven’t we all been there.