2019 INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING LEAGUE – EUROPEAN DERBY
- Saturday, November 23 – Sunday, November 24, 2019
- 5:00-7:00 PM Local Time (12:00 noon – 2:00 PM, U.S. Eastern Time)
- London Aquatics Centre – London, England
- Short Course Meters (SCM) format
- European franchises: Aqua Centurions, Energy Standard, Iron, London Roar
- Viewers Guide
The London Roar will be a little short-handed at the European Derby stop of the International Swimming League (ISL) this weekend, though they’re still the favorites to take home the title.
London will host the derby at the London Aquatics Centre that was previously used for the Olympic Games in front of a sold-out crowd. Racing will be held Saturday, November 23rd and Sunday, November 24th starting at 5:00 PM local time (noon U.S. Eastern time).
London will have just 12 men and 11 women on their team for the derby, short of the maximum 14 men and 14 women allowed (including 2 of each gender who are relay-only swimmers). While most of the team’s big stars will be in tow, fewer athletes will put more pressure and allow less flexibility in lineups, especially on the women’s side. Each team has 52 “swims” to fill per gender, meaning that on average, London’s women’s swimmers will have to race almost 5 events each.
Of the team’s 8 missing swimmers for the derby meet, 5 are Australian – which follows a pattern we saw in the U.S. Derby as well, where several Australians are missing. While no reason was given for their absence, this weekend is the Swimming Australia annual awards ceremony.
Among the missing swimmers are the defending Olympic champion in the 100 free Kyle Chalmers, Cam McEvoy, and Elijah Winnington on the men’s side. On the women’s side, the team will be without Australians Jess Hansen and Taylor McKeown. The other missing swimmers are Spanish Olympic champion Mireia Belmonte, who has only raced in one meet for London this season, in Budapest; Britain’s Holly Hibbott; and Brazil’s Bruno Fratus (though Fratus was only ever committed to 1 meet anyway).
Based on MVP scoring (which only gives a 50% multiplier for Skins races and divides relay points equally among all participants), they lose the #2 swimmer from Budapest Chalmers, who was a surprise winner of the skins race there.
There are some big names included on that list of absences, like McEvoy and Belmonte, but on an individual level none were massive contributors in Budapest. It’s the loss of depth, though, that will hurt the Roar: in total, that group combined for 98.5 points in Budapest, where Fratus and Hibbott both didn’t race.
The Roar, however, will also get some reinforcements in the form of the ISL debuts for Duncan Scott and Siobhan-Marie O’Connor. Scott, who at last summer’s World Championships was the individual bronze medalist in the 200 free, should help soften the blow from the loss of Chalmers. At last weekend’s British University & Colleges Championships (BUCS) he showed off his range with 15 races in 48 hours, including a record-setting 200 fly. Long known as a world-class freestyler, Scott has really developed into a well-rounded swimmer over the last year who should contribute mightily in the ISL format.
His butterfly skills should be a boost especially – in Budapest, the Roar had the 8th-place finisher in the 100 fly (James Guy) and 200 fly (Vini Lanza) on the men’s side.
Scott’s Lifetime Bests:
| LCM | SCM | |
| 50 free | 22.62 | 21.53 |
| 100 free | 47.87 | 46.64 |
| 200 free | 1:44.91 | 1:42.47 |
| 400 free | 3:56.02 | 3:40.40 |
| 50 fly | 24.43 | 23.84 |
| 100 fly | 52.25 | 51.36 |
| 200 fly | 1:56.60 | 1:54.43 |
| 200 IM | 1:56.65 | 1:53.82 |
| 400 IM | 4:20.39 | 4:06.00 |
O’Connor likewise adds versatility for the Roar. She’ll soften the blow from the loss of Belmonte, who after a lot of recent health issues really didn’t live up to the potential that she might’ve had in this format earlier in her career. O’Connor is the two-time defending Commonwealth Games champion in the 200 IM, and she was 7th in that event at the 2019 World Championships.
In full form, O’Connor is MVP caliber, though she’s unlikely to challenge for a skins title, which does make MVP an uphill climb.
O’Connor’s Lifetime Bests:
| LCM | SCM | |
| 50 free | 25.28 | 24.72 |
| 100 free | 53.81 | 52.98 |
| 20 free | 1:55.82 | 1:53.82 |
| 100 back | 1:02.35 | 1:05.83 |
| 50 breast | 31.24 | 30.42 |
| 100 breast | 1:06.34 | 1:05.07 |
| 200 breast | 2:27.37 | 2:28.42 |
| 50 fly | 26.45 | 25.49 |
| 100 fly | 57.45 | 55.93 |
| 200 fly | 2:15.08 | 2:13.85 |
| 200 IM | 2:06.88 | 2:05.13 |
| 400 IM | 4:44.17 | 4:46.98 |
Between them, the pair holds 14 British National Records, and so if nothing else, they should bring some cheers from the home crowd.
The team will also be boosted by the return of Matthew Wilson to the lineup. Another Australian, Wilson raced in the season-opener in Lewisville before missing the Budapest meet as the debut of Adam Peaty gave the Roar a glut of breaststrokers. In Lewisville, he was 6th in the 100 breast, 4th in the 200 IM, 4th in the 50 breast, and won the 200 breast – his specialty where this summer he tied the long course World Record.
It’s not clear where he fits in to the team at this meet, aside from spelling Peaty from the 200 breast (he was 3rd in that race in Budapest). But, with 3 breaststrokers, that puts even more pressure upon the Roar’s thin lineup, meaning that we’ll likely see at least one of those breaststrokers forced into an unexpected spot this weekend.
Returning for the Roar in London will be, among others, Adam Peaty, the World Record holder who won both the 50 and 100 breaststrokes in Budapest; and Emma McKeon, who has turned into one of the surprises of this series. McKeon ranked 4th in MVP scoring in Budapest and has 6 individual event wins to her credit in 3 meets.
By way of winning each of their first 2 meets, the Roar should, along with Energy Standard, have no problem advancing to the Las Vegas finale in December. All they need to do is not finish last, and they’ve secured a spot in the championship meet. Even if they did, it would have to be last place by a massive margin for them to be eliminated.
London Roar Roster, 2019 ISL – European Derby
| James Guy | Minna Atherton |
| Adam Peaty | Holly Barratt |
| Duncan Scott | Emma McKeon |
| Alex Graham | Cate Campbell |
| Matt Wilson | Bronte Campbell |
| Peter Bernek | Sydney Pickrem |
| Christian Diener |
Jeanette Otteson
|
| Kiril Prigoda |
Siobhan Marie-O’Connor
|
| Finlay Knox | Sarah Vasey |
| Vini Lanza | Marie Wattel |
| Yuri Kisil | Boglarka Kapas |
| Guido Guilherme |
I’ve been playing around with doing a start list in a spreadsheet and it’s a more difficult than expected (it’d probably be a bit easier if you had knowledge of current form like the coaches). The biggest hole I have is the 400m free where the swimmers that can meet the benchmark are Kapas and McKeon but McKeon already has enough swims.
Hibbott is here to save the 400m free. How do you have a 400m free time for McKeon? Didn’t know she’d ever swum that race. And yeah, with 8 races on the schedule, she’s got more than enough.
And no Wilson in 200 breast it seems and I also have him in 200 IM to rest Scott. I just left the 400 free slot blank because no choice made sense without Hibbott. The medley relay should have been a win if they kept Scott out of the 50 free because his split was 1.5s faster in the 4×100 free. That is assuming it wasn’t the IM that he still hadn’t recovered from.
How well has your start list been aligning with the coaches’ choices so far?
I’m guessing Scott had recovered from the IM at that point since his 50 free was just 0.1 seconds off his PB, and that it was the ~8 minute gap in between the 50 free and the relay that was the problem.
Have a look. I marked the errors in red some of which were caused by Wilson being absent and Hibbott being on the team.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bwoD_dAKORURM684u9BEcB4oeXGbcxEvw3zOvnA7YX4/
I also had Scott in 200 free instead of 400 IM and not in 50 free. I wasn’t really happy for all the choices and kind of gave up a bit in the end.
Thanks for sharing! Very nice layout. You were pretty spot-on overall, and I like your plan for Scott a lot more than what actually happened (though he was rather impressive in the 400 IM and set a new PB). I didn’t know about the other options, and I agree that Graham would’ve been a good choice for the 50, since they have similar PBs and Graham has been swimming very well.
I might copy your sheet and do a similar guess for the final once we get the roster. For London Roar only, because I don’t really care enough about the other teams to expend so much effort haha.
Did you get your data from swimrankings.net? I’m trying to find… Read more »
Yeah, I don’t know of a better source than swimrankings except the national DBs which is a bit too tedious. I think Scott can probably handle more events than I put him in but not as many as the coaches chose. Provided the 400 im didn’t affect the medley relay it might have been a better choice because Guy is stronger in 200 free than Bernek is in 400 im.
That makes sense, swimrankings seems pretty good, although I notice some absences (like the times from 2019 Aussie Word Trials). I’ve been looking for something like this because I have a lot of ideas for analyses that can be done with the data. Cool data visualizations too, like this website: http://tany.kim/swimmers-history/. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually sit down and work on the project though.
It’s a real shame the FINA website isn’t as good as the IAAF one. The IAAF website is a bit hard to navigate but at least it has all the info and stats you’d want all in one place and always up-to-date.
Lanza if he were swimming well could swim both fly and the 200Im he need to step up
So London Roar lost a lot of sprint depth on the men’s side by losing 4 of the 8 swimmers on the men’s 4×100 free relays. It doesn’t look like they have any strong contenders in the skins either.
On the women’s side, they’re missing a second sprint breaststroker (important for the medley relay) and have a few gaps in the distance free/fly/IM events from Hibbott’s and Belmonte’s absences so it’ll be interesting to see how they fill those.
It’s a testament the strength of Roar’s roster that, despite the multiple big scorers missing, they still look stacked.
I think they’ll still manage a decent A team in the 4×100 free but the B team will be weak. It’s not like their B team at Budapest gained loads of points anyway.
Wonder if they’ll be tempted to use Scott in the skins? He went 21-mid at BUCS last week (split 20-high on a couple of relays too), and he certainly has the endurance for the three rounds.
I think they will, because I don’t see many other options on the roster, but he’ll probably need to improve on his PB if he wants to make it past the first round. It took 21.15 in Budapest to get through.
Not in 50. Chalmers: 22.07 Scott: 22.62
Scott’s new 50m SCM PB is promising but that’s still a big difference (20.84 from Chalmers vs. 21.53).
McKeon may have to swim the 200 fly.
Breaststroke should be ok with SMOC and Vasey in the 50/100 and Pickrem coming in for the 200.
I doubt they’d use McKeon because she’ll most likely be in skins which is the next event. Maybe Marie Wattel for 200 fly?
But they could use both C1 and C2 in the skins
I guess so, but McKeon has been faster than C2 in 50m at every meet so far and has better endurance than both but McKeon probably couldn’t match Kromowidjojo in R3 anyway.
McKeon did way better than C1, who was more than a second behind Kromo in round 3. After that performance, I think McKeon is at least on par with C1 as a skins contender, as long as she can get out of round 1. I doubt C2 has as much endurance as McKeon, and she hasn’t shown as much speed either in these past two meets.
Honestly, McKeon is a great 50m sprinter too, especially after improving in the event this year; she just doesn’t get many international opportunities to do it due to the Campbell sisters squeezing her out of the event.
Wattel’s 200 fly in one of the earlier meets was not good. I’d put McKeon in the 200 fly and C2 in the skins.
I totally missed that. 9 seconds over her PB. 😲
Showed some good form at BUCS last week so she might be in better shape to perform in the 200 fly this weekend.
She didn’t swim any faster than the meet she did the bad 200 fly.
Her 200 fly seemed badly paced. She was ahead of the field at the 100m mark and then just died on the back 100m.
I still think McKeon is the better pick for the skins, but the competition at the Euro derby looks stiff, to say the least, and it’s looking like a big ask to make it through the first round, so maybe it would actually be better to put McKeon in the 200 fly. I’d be curious to see how she does in the event, since she’s so good in the 100m fly and 200m free that it makes you think that she should be great in the 200 fly too.
Matt Wilson could also swim the 200 IM
They also have Duncan Scott and Finlay Knox for that, who both specialize in the 200 IM, so that’s not a thin event for them. It’s nice to have Wilson back but Roar needed 50/100 free swimmers a lot more.
Scott will probably have to pick up Chalmers’ 100 free duties (including relays) and there’s only so many events he can swim.
Yep, I was thinking Wilson in the IM so Scott could do the free and fly
Finlay just hitting stride. Some great work by Todd Melton getting him to this point.
That is just an embarrassment of riches.
A full strength London Roar squad is insane
Are they the only team who hasn’t been at full strength for a meet yet? They’ve always been missing at least one big name.
Not sure why Emma McKeon is one of the surprises . She has been very versatile for a few years now.
Maybe they’re surprised by how many events she’s winning? I think she’s just often underrated.
Yes, she has 17 World Championship medals….not the way to fly under the radar unnoticed!
I know, but since it’s sport and there’s a “winner takes all” mentality, people pay more attention to gold medal haulers in individual events, especially those who dominate the competition. McKeon is vital for the Aussie relays and gets on individual podiums a lot too but she hasn’t gotten an individual gold yet at Worlds/Olympics level and that’s probably partly why she doesn’t get as much of the spotlight as I think she deserves.
Thats true….like Jenny Thompson never won an individual Olympic gold either…but was often MVP!
By the way, Scott broke PBs in 50 free, 200 fly and 400 IM last weekend. He’s now 21.53, 1:54.43 and 4:06 flat in those events.
Thanks Jeff, didn’t realize the database hadn’t been update yet. Will add those now.
With your swimswam rankings, are people supposed to be on the list twice ? . The men’s short course 400 metre free top 25 list has three double ups I think .