A Look Beneath the Waves: Analyzing Results from the 2024 U.S. Trials (So Far)

2024 U.S. OLYMPIC TRIALS

• June 15-23, 2024
• Lucas Oil Stadium — Indianapolis, IN
• LCM (50 Meters)
• Session Start Times (ET):
  • 11 a.m. Prelims
  • 7:45 p.m. Finals (varying based on broadcast needs)
• Meet Central
• Broadcast Info
• SwimSwam’s Definitive Guide to Trials
• Psych Sheets
• Live Results
• SwimSwam Preview Index
• SwimSwam Pick ’em Contest
• Prelims Recaps: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4
• Finals Recaps: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4

Thank you to Barry Revzin for running the numbers.

We’re eight sessions into the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, which means we’ve got a wealth of data to comb through in between sessions. Before this meet began we only had the entry data, but now there are actual results available to us.

You may have heard superlatives such as “fastest prelims ever” thrown around, but let’s dive into the numbers to see if that’s true or a gross exaggeration.

Who Drops, Who Adds, Who Makes the Trials Cut?

This meet is the meet to make, and it’s a pressure cooker once athletes get here. It’s not a meet where many swimmers will drop time from seed, and the data reflects that.

Across all athletes, only 27.22% have dropped from their entry time. Liam Bell has the honor of having the biggest drop (by percentage) up to this point in the meet. His 2.26-second drop in the 100 breast catapulted him from 43rd seed all the way to 4th.

It’s another Bell who leads the standings in women’s events. Lucy Bell dropped 1.29-seconds in the 100 fly, raising her place from 72nd to 19th.

We’ve also broken the data into two other categories to answer some questions we had. Earlier this week, I hypothesized that the home crowd was lifting the Indiana swimmers to standout swims, and as a cohort they are beating the average.

It’s also worth noting that the “Indiana” category encompasses all the athletes repping the LSC, not necessarily swimmers who were born and raised in the Hoosier state. That’s why Chris Guiliano‘s improvement leads the rankings here. The Notre Dame-trained swimmer hails from Pennsylvania.

Adding in a Sandpipers category was something I pitched to Barry half as a joke, but it’s an interesting stat to see. Again, this only includes athletes currently representing Sandpipers, so this row doesn’t include alum Bella Sims who is entered with Florida. Only four Sandpipers have gone best times so far, but a majority of Ron Aitken-trained swimmers got under the Trials cut during their swims.

Tracking how many athletes have made the Trials cut at the meet is an interesting metric to track the level of performance on display. Some athletes targeted this meet and only recently made the qualifying time, so it makes sense to see some regression when it comes time for the big meet.

Check out the table that breaks it down by event instead:

Not all of the swims in the “Biggest Drop” category earned a semis or finals berth, which is a testament to the thesis that Trials isn’t just about selecting the team; it’s also about giving the next generation the chance to rub shoulders with the best in a high-pressure, high production environment.

What Gets the Job Done

Finally, let’s take a look at how the qualifying times for each round has changed. We’re tracking it back through 2012. You can draw your own conclusions in the comments, but I want to highlight the most heinous stat: the speed it took to make the Olympic team in the 100 butterfly. The 2nd-place time got faster by almost an entire second, which looks absurd on paper but makes more sense when you remember there were three generational talents all firing at once in that final.

The women’s 400 IM is an outlier here. All the other 400-meter distance events got faster to make the team, but the 400 IM seems to have taken a step back.

The finals of the men’s and women’s 100 free swims tonight so we have impartial data, but it’s interesting to note the difference in prelims and semis qualifying times so far. Both events took a big step forward in the 16th-place time, but the women’s event returned to a near-2016 standard after semis. On the other hand, the men’s event was the fastest its been in the last four quads through both rounds so far.

Times to Make Semis

Times to Make Finals

Times to Make Olympic Team

What Comes Next?

There’s still nine sessions left to go, including this morning, so stay tuned for more data analysis throughout the week.