2026 PRO SWIM SERIES – AUSTIN
- January 14-17, 2026
- Austin, Texas
- Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center
- LCM (50 meters)
- Psych Sheet (updated)
- How to Watch
- Live Results
- Live Recaps
Thursday Prelims Heat Sheets & Timeline
There were only a handful of notable scratches for prelims of day 2 of the 2025 Pro Swim Series meet in Austin, with not scratches perhaps almost as noteworthy.
The two biggest names absent from heat sheets on Thursday morning are Indiana undergrad Josh Matheny, who dropped the double-prize-money 50 breaststroke as the #7 seed, and pro Jack Dahlgren, who dropped the 200 backstroke as the #8 seed.
Matheny’s absence was not a big surprise as a late scratch out of the 100 breaststroke on Wednesday. Dahlgren, meanwhile, holds his entry in the 100 fly (#5 seed) after finishing 8th in the 100 back on Wednesday (57.21 in prelims, 58.04 in finals). He doesn’t swim the 100 back all that often in long course.
Three Texas Longhorns holding onto their entries for Thursday morning is the bigger news.
Shaine Casas, after no-showing the double-prize-money 200 IM on Wednesday, a race where he’s the World Championship silver medalist, is still entered as the #3 seed in the 100 fly behind Caeleb Dressel and Maxime Grousset. That was and is his only entry on Thursday, so no signs there of whether he’ll show up or not.
In the 200 backstroke, his Texas IM training partners Leon Marchand and Carson Foster are both still entered as the #3 and #7 seeds, respectively. Marchand is seeded behind only his French countrymates Yohann Ndoye Brouard and Mewen Tomac.
For both Marchand and Foster, this is a chance to climb the theoretical 800 IM add-up rankings, as broken down by Sam Black last week. For Marchand, the 200 back is probably their weakest leg of that metric.
His best is a 1:57.14, which is two-and-a-half seconds slower tham Michael Phelps‘ best time and the slowest among the top seven swimmers in that ranking. While there is little doubt based on his time in short course meters (1:47.68) and short course yards (1:39.64 in a dual meet) that he has the ability to be faster in long course, that could depend on his effort: he cruised to a 2:05 in the 200 IM prelims on Wednesday, and on Thursday evening he has the 200 IM final with $3,000 on the line.
A 1:56.91 or better from the Frenchman would be enough to surpass Phelps as the best-ever in this particular computation, a minor but meaningful standard given what he has done to many of Phelps’ other records.
Full List of Thursday Events:
- Men’s & Women’s 50 Breast (2x prize money) (9:00/9:04 start)
- Men’s & Women’s 100 fly (9:12/9:20 start)
- Men’s & Women’s 200 back (9:28/9:37 start)
- Men’s & Women’s 400 free (9:49/10:11 start)
