10 Things We Noticed on Day 5 of the 2014 U.S. Nationals

Full day 5 finals recap here.

(1) NBAC and SwimMAC are developing into the United States’ two power-programs for elite level swimming, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the men’s 200 IM final. The top 5 finishers were all from either SwimMAC Carolina (Ryan Lochte 1st, Tyler Clary 3rd) or NBAC (Michael Phelps 2nd, Conor Dwyer 4th, Chase Kalisz 5th). With Ty Stewart, who is in Charlotte for the summer, finishing 8th, SwimMAC had a 3rd A-finalist as well.

At the top of that pile was the same old, same old, Lochte and Phelps. I didn’t realize how much I missed those two going head-to-head until I saw it again. (2) Lochte swam what we in the business like to call a “Thiago Pereira IM.” That means that he went out very hard and built a big early lead (1.6 seconds ahead of Phelps), but struggled to hold that quality on the freestyle leg.

No matter, he still had enough to hold of Phelps at the wall by .05 seconds, 1:56.50-1:56.55.

(3) This race was the best that Phelps looked in a final all week. For starters, it was the only of his four events where he improved his time from prelims to finals, going from a 1:58.74 to a 1:56.55. Phelps also closed very well – not just as compared to Phelps, but as compared to anyone. His 27.21 on the freestyle leg was three-tenths better than Clary (who’s been on fire), and is even faster than Phelps was on the last 50 at the 2012 Olympic Trials. I’ll take that as a sign that he’s still relearning his pacing on this IM, and that he’ll be even faster at Pan Pacs.

(4) Anthony Ervin got his spot on the Pan Pacs team, and once again we’ve learned just how hard it is to be the best in the world, or even in the country, in both the 50 and 100 freestyle at the same time. Adrian has won two of the last four summer National Championships in the 50 free, and three of the last four in the 100 free, but only in 2013 did he win both titles.

In 1988 (Matt Biondi), 1992 (Alexander Popov), and 1996 (Popov again), the 50 free and 100 free champion were the same. Those were the first three Olympic Games where the 50 was offered, and could have raised the question as to whether the two races were different enough to warrant separate titles. Since, however, nobody has pulled off the double. In the last 5 World Championships, only Cesar Cielo has pulled it off (in 2009) either.

Male sprinters are becoming so muscular and the training has to be so specific and specialized that it’s going to become harder and harder to successfully complete this double. It will happen, just by the almost fluke-ish nature of the events sometimes, but a gap is growing.

(5) If USA Swimming is going to continue to have the men’s 800 and women’s 1500 at meets like this National Championships, then they need to figure out a way to add greater incentives to them. Unlike the stroke 50’s, winners do not automatically go to Worlds in 2015. While the men’s 800 and women’s 1500 weren’t selection events for Pan Pacs, the races will be swum at Pan Pacs, and USA Swimming is giving everyone the opportunity to “bump” the National-winning times.

This meant that after a very long meet, most of the top distance swimmers dropped out – and it’s hard to blame them, with zero incentive to race the events. It’s hard to keep the attention through two races that are so long and are without significance in the middle of a session, especially if we are presumably working toward a day where the demand is high enough to air live every session of a meet like Nationals.

One way to do that is to add some reward on to the Team Scoring finishes or the individual high point awards, but that wouldn’t affect swimmers like Katie Ledecky, who can’t accept prizes anyway. National Championship meets have to satisfy the demands of putting the best team forward, ultimately for the Olympic Games, but we’d like to see some creativity to ensure that they also put on the best show possible for the fans as well.

Simone Manuel broke the National Age Group Record in the 50 free, and won the race, in 24.56. She’s going to Stanford next year, where she’ll train with Lia Neal and Maddy Schaefer and a sprint group that’s always been better than it got credit for, but is now really starting to draw in the top names. (6) Greg Meehan has had the Midas touch since taking the helm for the Stanford women, and on the college circuit it’s hard to think of many better places American fans would rather see her at right now. The United States hasn’t really had a great women’s sprint program in several years, along the lines of what NBAC is doing with the 200 IM, as mentioned above, for example. Europe and Australia continue to dominate this 50 free internationally.

Dare I say it – but maybe it’s time for a top female American sprint prospect to head overseas and see what’s working, or better yet for someone stateside to make a big offer to a big foreign coach to come this way and work.

After all, (7) Sweden’s Sarah Sjostrom’s World Record time in the 50 fly would have still won this women’s 50 free by .13 seconds. She was swimming outdoors too. That swim is still shocking to me.

(8) It will be trial by fire for the young female American freestylers, including Manuel, on the relays at Pan Pacs. They will have Missy Franklin to lead them, but that’s about all they have. Out of 11 American women who swam at the Olympics in 2012 in the 400 and 800 free relays, Franklin, Shannon Vreeland and Jessica Hardy are the only two who even made the roster for Pan Pacs. Of those three, only Franklin and Vreeland are scheduled to swim the free relays. From Worlds last year, Vreeland, Franklin, and Manuel are the three who will repeat on the free relays.

Some of the key legs from those relays are gone. Allison Schmitt, for the second straight year, missed the international team. Natalie Coughlin, a legend, missed the Pan Pacs squad. Megan Romano, who had the amazing anchor leg to overtake Australia in the 400 free relay at Worlds and who has legendary relay abilities, missed the team.

But, if we’re looking at this from a “meta” perspective (which is code for – the Olympics are where the money’s at), this changing of the guard couldn’t have happened in a better year. The pressure is relatively low at Pan Pacs, and while it might mean a loss or two to the Australians, this American team will be that much better prepared for Rio 2016. And who knows, maybe some of the aforementioned will be sparked by the challenge and back for those Olympics – that would create a really incredible dynamic for the Americans. In theory.

(9) There was something very, very wrong with the start of the men’s 50 free B-Final. For those who weren’t watching, we’ll get race video up as soon as it was available, but while only 1 DQ was called (John Murray in lane 8) there was a whole lot of moving and shaking going on off the blocks. When FINA/USA Swimming/everyone else changed the false start rules a few years back where swimmers weren’t recalled, the intention was to minimize the effect on other competitors. However, in this final, there was clearly impact on many swimmers at the start, and maybe the race should have been recalled. The three swimmers next to Murray were the 5th, 6th, and 7th place finishers, and visibly lanes 6 and 7 especially were impacted.

Dressel still was a solid 22.50 for the B-Final victory. That will get him onto the Junior Pan Pacs roster, and so the great young talent and America’s next sprint hope will have to wait a few more years to make his senior international debut.

(10) Melanie Margalis‘ journey to USA Swimming National Champion has been kind of a weird one. For those who don’t remember, she was DQ’ed in prelims of the 200 IM at the 2012 Olympic Trials in a swim that would have put her through to the semi-finals of that race. Since then, she’s been the unsung hero of the Georgia women’s back-to-back NCAA titles, and in the 2013-2014 college season, had an absolute career year – the first full-season performance where we all sat up and took notice of how truly special of a swimmer she is.

At Nationals, she had a lot of choices to make. Part of her improvement in the last year is that she’s been able to put together fantastic swims in a ton of different events,including expanding her talents in the middle distance freestyles and the sprint breaststrokes. She ultimately honed in on four races – the 100 and 200 breaststroke, and the 200 and 400 IM. That was exactly the right decision, as she went lifetime bests in all four, was 3rd in the 200 breast and the 400 IM, and won the 200 IM on the last day. She’s now swum the three fastest times of her career in the event over the last two meets, and that’s just a sign of how much quality she’s shown in the last year. Events that she was average at she became good at, and events that she was good at, she became great at.

More than any other female swimmer in the college class of 2014, I’m intrigued to see what Margalis is able to do in the next two years as part of a women’s IM group that is vulnerable to new blood in the United States.