2016 U.S. Olympic Trials Day 5 Prelims Performance Stats

2016 U.S. OLYMPIC TRIALS

• Sunday, June 26 – Sunday, July 3, 2016
• CenturyLink Center, Omaha, Nebraska
• SwimSwam Preview Links and Schedule
• Psych Sheets
• NBC Broadcast Schedule
• Thursday Prelims Heat Sheets
• Live Results via Commit Swimming App (or find them here. )
• Links to Live Stream

The day 5 prelims are done. Bethany Galat and Brandon Fiala continued their stand out meets. Galat dropped 2.7 seconds from her seed in the 200 breast, and Fiala dropped 2.8 in the 200 IM. Galat’s drop moved her from 26th on the psych sheet to 2nd headed into semi finals. Often big morning time drops regress at night, but after her 19th seed to 3rd place performance in the 400 IM, she has to be considered a legit contender.

Here’s the top time drops by percentage in each event:

So far the top swimmers coming out of prelims has been relatively predictable. However it’s striking just how unpredictable the lower ranked swimmers have been. For example here’s the place change from seed (seed adjusted for scratches) for the women’s 400 IM (the other events look very similar to the women’s 400 IM. I won’t waste your time with 10 more of the same chart) (positive means the swimmer moved up, negative means they moved down):

The top swimmers held place, but the rest were almost completely random . As a comparison I ranked the numbers 1-100 randomly and then plotted the difference from the original number. That plot is below. The shape the points follow is almost exactly the same as the points in the plot of real results after about place 25-30. The only minor deviation is  that the real results don’t have as many extreme swings at the top and bottom (30th to last, or last to 25th).

The behavior of the field in aggregate doesn’t undermine the accomplishment of the swimmers who manage to take advantage of the volatility. The biggest places jumps of the meet so far are for the men: Mark McGlaughlin who moved from 149th ot 26th in the 100 back and for the women: Caroline Hauder who moved from 150th to 59th in the 100 back. Here are the swimmers in each event who have gained the most places in prelims:

Men:

Women: