He’s Back: Ryan Lochte Entered in 400 IM for Santa Clara Grand Prix; Seebohm/Franklin to Do Battle

Olympic champion, then out of the 400 IM, then back in the 400 IM but not really training for it or racing for it. Ryan Lochte’s affair with the 400 IM since winning gold in London has been a complicated one.

For the first time since winning his only individual title at the 2012 Summer Games, Lochte will again race the 400 IM at the Santa Clara Grand Prix this coming weekend, according to the psych sheets that were released today.

See full psych sheets here.

In that 400 IM, one of six entries for Lochte, he’ll see Chase Kalisz, who’s a serious contender to swim the event at the World Championships, Michael Weiss, and training partner Conor Dwyer, all of whom could, or more accurately should, be at least finalists at this summer’s World Championship Trials.

In other notable appearances:

1. Missy Franklin will return to the Grand Prix. After skipping the Charlotte stop to focus on finals, prom, and graduation from high school, one of the most consistent Grand Prix competitors for the last half-decade will be back in Santa Clara. She’ll have 7 total entries, and a lot of them will be incredibly good races. In the 200 free, she’ll see Olympic champion Allison Schmitt; in the 100 free, it will be Jessica Hardy, who was her Olympic partner in the event. She has a battle with another Olympic partner, Elizabeth Beisel, in the 200 backstroke, though it’s worth noting that a minor non-swimming rib injury kept Beisel from racing all that hard at the Mel Zajac International in Canada last week (and scratching a few events.)

The 100 backstroke will also see Franklin set up against her U.S. Olympic partner Rachel Bootsma, but this race has perhaps the stiffest competition. Australian champion Emily Seebohm comes in with the top seed, and Liz Pelton, Megan Romano, and Bonnie Brandon will all be in the meet as well. Remember that Franklin and Seebohm were the Olympic gold and silver medalists in the 100 back last year.

In the 200 IM, she’s only the 6th seed, with swimmers like Seebohm, Olympic bronze medalist Caitlin Leverenz, Pelton, Beisel, Stanford’s Maya DiRado, and Celina Li all in the race. That’s a huge group of Trials finalists, which could be a good opportunity for Franklin to test her mettle in this 200 IM. The schedule for Nationals lines up so that Franklin would have no interference from her primary events in swimming this 200 IM on the meet’s last day.

2. A sizable Australian contingent will be at the meet. Aside from Seebohm, that includes many other huge names like Olympian Brittany Elmslie, the 18-year old who had a breakout in 2012 and could be a future star for the Aussies. Mack Horton, a part of the Australian men’s distance revival, will be there, as will Jack McLoughlin. 16-year old Jemma Schlicht, Kotuku Ngawati, Mikkayla Sheridan, Sian Whitaker, Jenna Strauch, and Samantha Marshall are all coming along as well.

3. Brazil will come too. This is typically the most international of the Grand Prix meets, being at the end and a well-timed tuneup for the summer’s top meet. Aside from Cesar Cielo, who’s entered to swim the 50 free, 100 free, and 100 fly, a big team of largely lesser-known swimmers from the powerful Minas Tenis club will be at the meet, along with a handful of others.

4. The Brazilians will beef up the sprint races. Led by Olympic 100 free champion Nathan Adrian and Olympic 50 free silver medalist Cullen Jones, the sprints will see Cielo, Olympican Jimmy Feigen, Olympian Matt Grevers, Ryan Lochte, Anthony Ervin, a very good Chinese sprinter Haiqi Jiang, Bradley deBorde from Florida, Aaron Wayne, and more very good Brazilians Henrique Martins, Nicolas Oliveira, and Fernando dos Santos. That’s the deepest sprint field that we’ve seen anywhere in the world thus far in 2013.

5. Kevin Cordes in Long Course At Last – We still haven’t seen Arizona sophomore Kevin Cordes race in long course since wrapping up the most unreal yards breaststroke season ever at the NCAA Championships in March. Now is his chance. There’s been plenty of conversation about how well he’ll transfer his all-time records in yards to long course meters (the conversion factors are obviously too good to be true), but keep in mind that he’s the 17-18 National Age Group Record holder in both courses for the United States. Either way, we’ll start to get at least some answers at this meet, where he’s entered to swim the 100 breast, the 200 breast, and a bit of a different event than he normally swims, the 50 free. In the breaststrokes, he’ll see U.S. Olympians Scott Weltz and Clark Burckle, as well as Canadian 200 breast champion Richard Funk, New Zealand record holder Glenn Snyders, Cody Miller, Brazilian star Felipe Lima, and American Mike Alexandrov, who’s been swimming exceedingly well in 2013. Expect Cordes to be very tired (remember his 2:02 yards swim in the 200 breaststroke in a dual meet just a few weeks out from his 1:48 in college competition) but maybe we’ll see a little glimmer.

6. Women’s Breaststrokes – As deep and impressive as the men’s breaststrokes are, the women’s might be even better. Jessica Hardy, Ellyn Baumgardner, Ashley Wanland, Laura Sogar, and Micah Lawrence, who should all be finalists at the American Nationals this summer will all be entered. So to will Alia Atkinson from Jamaica, who was 4th in London; Australian Sam Marshall; and top Canadian swimmer Martha McCabe.