arena Swim of the Week: Ryan Branon Closes Well To Hit Big PB In 200 Fly In Fort Lauderdale

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Disclaimer: Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Swim of the Week is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.

Longhorn Aquatics’ Ryan Branon had a pair of phenomenal swims in the men’s 200 butterfly on Thursday at the Pro Swim Series stop in Fort Lauderdale, resetting his personal best twice and ultimately finishing 4th in an elite final.

Branon, 21, came into the meet with a PB of 1:58.40, set at the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, and he brought that mark down to 1:57.86 in the prelims to advance 5th into the final.

In the evening, Branon was patient, turning 8th at the 100-meter mark, but then he started to pick some swimmers off, moving into 6th at the final turn and then claiming 4th at the finish.

His closing 100 split of 1:00.55 ranked 3rd in the field, only trailing Martin Espernberger and Carson Foster, who went 1-2.

Branon has always shown a penchant for closing well, and look no further than his swim from the Olympic Trials for evidence of that. He closed in 29.76, making him one of two swimmers to come home sub-30 in the Trials prelims, to nearly snag a second swim, placing 18th, three one-hundredths shy of a berth in the semis.

Split Comparison

Branon, a rising senior at the University of Texas, is now the 4th-fastest American this season in the 200 fly. He’s coming off a 24th-place finish in the 200 fly at his debut NCAA Championships.

Making the evening even better for the Branon family was that Ryan’s younger brother, 16-year-old Daniel Branon, set a best time in the ‘C’ final of the 200 fly, clocking 2:00.82 to move into a tie for 39th all-time in the boys’ 15-16 age group.

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