2026 Bergen Swim Festival
- Friday, April 17th – Sunday, April 19th
- Prelims at 9:00am local (3:00am ET)/Finals at 6pm local (Noon ET)
- Bergen, Norway
- Alexander Dale Oen (AdO) Arena, Bergen (50m Olympic pool)
- Meet Central
- SwimSwam Preview
- Entries
- Live Results
- Livestream
- Day 1 Finals Recap
Van Mathias turned heads yesterday in Bergen while swimming the 100 Breast. In prelims, he went a fairly big PB, dipping under the 59-second mark for the first time at 58.98. Then in finals, the IU grad had another huge swim in store, touching at 26.9 at the 50 en route to a massive 58.19, making him the 2nd fastest American in history. Mathias is Indiana Swimming & Diving’s Director of Operations and is training with Indiana as a pro.
Director of ops 26.39 in the 50 breast prelim.
Predictions for finals?
Isn’t he doing super short volume training too
i’ll give you time, hell i’ll give you my car. just give us a reliable relay leg.
This guy seems like an awesome teammate and down to earth.
A great example of why clubs and even colleges should keep training their athletes with a large IM component…when your main event stalls out, it’s great to have something else to jump in to!
I would be interested to hear some thoughts on how relatively mature swimmers I.e. 25 years old (Mathias, Fink, Qin come to mind in breastroke alone) are able to unlock such massive chunks off their PBs resembling almost age group swimmers. In other words what are they doing now in their training that is different to a few years back? Or is it more a biological thing of growing into their bodies at a later stage than others? Etc
Men’s peak strength doesn’t develop until mid-late 20s. Most swimmers leave college and start their careers, now you’re seeing guys making that “career” continuing to swim fast.
And like Nic Fink, Van Mathias has an out-of-the-pool job to support his in-the-pool job. Good for him!
hunter armstrong and cody miller gotta take notes
It’s a technique change. He’s obviously using a different technique than everyone else in the pool. It’s the same thing that happened when Lochte kicked under water on his back in the 200 IM, and Berkhoff swam most of the 100 back under water in the 1980s. If it’s determined to be legal, you’re going to see 56s in a couple years from 10-20 different swimmers.
i agree, breaststroke seems to be very strength based(for some at least) and doesnt require the aerobic endurance of other events
Spoken like someone who never swam a 200 breast, without adequate training, and had quads reach full failure with 15 meters to go.
Yeah 200 breaststroke is nasty business.