Smith & Licon Take Over 2020 PSS Leads In Fast Knoxville Meet

2020 PRO SWIM SERIES – KNOXVILLE

The Knoxville Pro Swim Series featured the top three women’s swims and top four men’s swims of the series so far, with Regan Smith and Will Licon claiming series leads.

In Knoxville, Smith put up two of the top three swims of the entire PSS this season, taking over the series lead from Katie Ledecky. Smith’s 58.27 in the 100 back (worth 986 Power Points) will take over as the time to beat. And it’s going to be tough, even for Ledecky: in order to best that swim, Ledecky would need to be 1:53.4, 3:57.4, 8:06.9 or 15:24.5 in the distance freestyles. It would take 1:04.4/2:19.7 in the breaststrokes, 55.7/2:02.3 in the butterflys, 2:06.6/4:27.5 in the IMs or 23.7/51.9 in sprint free. That means Smith is in firm control of the series, unless someone else has an otherworldly swim later in the tour.

On the men’s side, Licon took over the lead with a 2:10.34 win in the 200 breast. Runner-up Anton McKee had the second-best swim of the series so far, and the top two 400 freestylers (Zane Grothe and Kieran Smith) also beat former series leader Grothe’s 889-point swim from Greensboro.

Licon scored 917 FINA points with his swim – that one is going to be much more approachable than Smith’s swim. For example, in freestyle, it would take 21.5/48.2/1:44.9/3:46.4/7:45.2/14:56.2 to pass Licon, with those sprint times a possibility for several Americans. It would take 53.3/1:55.1 in backstroke, 58.7 in breast, 51.2/1:54.7 in fly or 1:57.2/4:10.8 in IM. That makes the men’s title much more wide open at this point.

The winners will take home the $10,000 series title.

For comparison: it took a 947-point swim to win the men’s title last year and a 968-point swim to win the women’s.

TOP FINA POINT SWIMS – 2019-2020 PRO SWIM SERIES

Note: we’re using the 2019 FINA Power Points tables (here and here), as those were the tables specifically linked to by USA Swimming for the Greensboro Pro Swim Series last fall. FINA has updated its Power Points tables for 2020, but it appears the PSS will use the 2019 tables for consistency with the Greensboro meet.

Women:

Rank Athlete FINA Points Time Event Meet
1 Regan Smith 986 58.27 100 Back Knoxville
2 Phoebe Bacon 956 58.86 100 Back Knoxville
3 Regan Smith 955 2:05.94 200 Back Knoxville
4 Katie Ledecky 939 8:14.95 800 Free Greensboro
5 Katie Ledecky 936 4:01.68 400 Free Greensboro
6 Katie Ledecky 931 1:55.68 200 Free Greensboro
7 Allison Schmitt 923 1:56.01 200 Free Knoxville
8 Annie Lazor 919 2:23.06 200 Breast Knoxville
9 Madisyn Cox 915 2:09.88 200 IM Knoxville
10 Kylie Masse 908 59.88 100 Back Greensboro

Men:

Rank Athlete FINA Points Time Event Meet
1 Will Licon 917 2:10.34 200 Breast Knoxville
2 Anton McKee 897 2:11.34 200 Breast Knoxville
3 Zane Grothe 894 3:48.38 400 Free Knoxville
4 Kieran Smith 893 3:48.51 400 Free Knoxville
5 Zane Grothe 889 3:48.80 400 Free Greensboro
6 Luca Urlando 888 1:56.00 200 Fly Greensboro
7 Justin Ress 885 53.99 100 Back Knoxville
7 Anton McKee 885 2:11.90 200 Breast Greensboro
9 Andrew Wilson 884 2:11.94 200 Breast Greensboro
10 Carson Foster 880 1:58.93 200 IM Greensboro

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About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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