2023 U.S. Nationals: Examining the Responses from the SwimSwam Pick ‘Em Contest

2023 U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

• June 27 – July 1, 2023
• Indianapolis, IN
• Indiana University Natatorium
• LCM (50m)
• Meet Central
• Psych Sheet (pre-scratch)
• SwimSwam Preview Index
• SwimSwam Pick ‘Em Contest

Before the 2023 U.S. National Championships kick off on Tuesday morning in Indianapolis, let’s take a look at how the SwimSwam Pick ‘Em contest is going. The Pick ‘Em contest will close Tuesday morning at 8:00 am Eastern Time, so if you haven’t gotten your picks in yet, there’s still a few hours to do so! You can find the link above.

This post is simply going to be examining a summary breakdown of the responses from those who have entered the contest up to this point in time. There are a few interesting trends in the responses, so let’s get into it.

One of the things I personally find most interesting is how those of you who entered the contest are feeling about Kate Douglass‘ fortunes at these Trials. It’s interesting because the Pick ‘Ems entrants selected Douglass as a heavy favorite in the women’s 200 breast, however, she wasn’t selected by the plurality of contestants to finish first or second in the 200 IM, 100 breast, or 100 fly.

Here are the summaries of some of those events.

As this first breakdown shows, a whopping 73.7% of entrants so far have selected Douglass to win the women’s 200 breast, beating Lilly King, Annie Lazor, and Lydia Jacoby by gigantic margins.

Despite firmly believing in Douglass’ chances in the 200 breast, very few selected her to win the 100 breast, instead opting for Lydia Jacoby as the heavy favorite.

Douglass received a slightly larger share of the selections for second in the 100 breast, though it’s still a relatively small slice of the pie. Interestingly, King is heavily favored to take second in the event in the view of the majority of the Pick ‘Em contest entrants.

The 100 breast is one thing, since Douglass is certainly seen as a better 200 breaststroker than 100 breaststroker, but the same dynamic as above is taking place in the women’s 200 IM too. Despite having earned the bronze medal in the 200 IM at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and these same Pick ‘Em contestants going with her as the heavy favorite in the 200 breast, Douglass doesn’t have a plurality of the vote to finish first or second in the 200 IM.

Instead, Virginia teammate Alex Walsh received a whopping 70% of the vote to come in first in the 200 IM, while Douglass had the third-most votes for first at 11.3%.

The selections for second in the women’s 200 IM are some of the most split selections I’ve seen in my time doing these Pick ‘Ems contests, and it’s Leah Hayes who ended up earning the plurality of the votes for second. Douglass did receive the second-largest share of the second-place votes, however, she’s essentially in a three-way tie with Regan Smith and Alex Walsh, leading Smith by just 0.7% and Walsh by 1.5%.

Finally, we have the women’s 100 fly, where Douglass is once again not favored to finish in the top two.

The contestants firmly believe in Torri Huske winning the women’s 100 fly, with 88% of respondents picking her.

Douglass did receive more selections to finish second than Claire Curzan by a couple percentage points, however, the entrants have gone with Regan Smith as the plurality decision to earn that second spot on the Worlds roster in the women’s 100 fly.

This presents an interesting look into how a section of the SwimSwam audience, the section that is participating in the Pick ‘Em contest, feels about how Douglass will fare this week in Indy. On the one hand, the contestants overwhelmingly project that Douglass will beat Lilly King, Annie Lazor, and Lydia Jacoby in the 200 breast. On the other hand, those same contestants don’t favor Douglass against that same field in the 100 breast, selected Alex Walsh and Leah Hayes over her in the 200 IM, and picked Torri Huske and Regan Smith over her in the 100 fly.

Another interesting result from the contest is that the contestants have overwhelmingly selected Regan Smith to win the women’s 200 back after being denied a spot on the World Champs roster in the event last year.

In one of the most lopsided results in the entire contest, the Pick ‘Ems entrants selected Smith to win the 200 back over Phoebe Bacon and Rhyan White by a massive margin. Receiving 96.5% of the vote, the Pick ‘Em contestants clearly buy into the momentum Smith has built since moving to Tempe to train under Bob Bowman.