Aaron Shackell On Making Olympics In Front Of Home Crowd: ‘It’s Everything To Me’

Aaron Shackell knew he was going to win the men’s 400 freestyle as soon as he flipped at the 350-meter mark in first place.

It didn’t matter that Shackell was a 19-year-old relatively inexperienced with big meets, swimming side-by-side alongside decorated athletes like 2021 Tokyo Olympic bronze medalist Kieran Smith. It also didn’t matter that he had already been leading for the majority of the race, which for some, could lead to fading on the homestretch. But Shackell was confident in what he could do.

“[During the] last 50, everything in my body just turned off and I couldn’t really hear anything,” Shackell said. “With the training that I do…if I have the lead with 50 meters left, I’m not going to lose.”

Shackell ended up touching the wall first, setting a best time of 3:45.46. With that result, he officially became the first pool swimmer to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympic games. After the race, he slammed the water, got out of the pool, and threw his hands up to a crowd of 20,689 that was roaring over what he just accomplished. Later, he got up on the podium besides the pool and waved to that same crowd, this time beaming with a first-place medal around his neck.

For Shackell, getting celebrated like this in a big stadium like Lucas Oil was what he always wanted.

“A lot people get nervous when they look at 20,000 people or a big stadium — for me, it makes me swim faster,” Shackell said. “I’ve always dreamed of performing in front of a basketball or a football stadium, at least when I was a kid. And in swimming, you don’t always have the opportunity. So getting an opportunity to put on a show in front of 20,000 fans, it’s everything to me.”

Evidently enough, making the Olympics in front of a massive crowd is a huge deal. But it just meant a little more when that crowd was in Indianapolis, Indiana, which is just a 30 minute drive from the town of Carmel, where Shackell is from. Not only is Carmel Shackell’s hometown, but it also contains the swimming community that built Shackell into who he is today.

Carmel High School boys’ swimming, which has won the last ten Indiana high school state championships, has a rich history of producing Olympians — most recently Jake Mitchell, who qualified for the 400 free at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. The same type of legacy is present at Carmel Swim Club, where head coach Chris Plumb has developed age groupers into some of the best American swimmers in the nation.

In fact, Shackell trusted Carmel Swim Club so much to the point where he trained there after transferring out of Cal-Berkeley this winter, midway through his freshman season. He thought he hadn’t been swimming great there, and wanted to stick with a familiar environment in arguably the most important training cycle of his swimming career.

“I didn’t want to risk wasting an opportunity,” Shackell said. “My improvement rate was unbelievable prior to leaving for Cal — I trusted Chris [Plumb] and I knew if I came back, I would improve in some way.”

The Carmel connection was also a family one for Shackell. His younger sister Alex, a member of the 2023 World Championships team and a contender to join her brother on the Paris squad, was the first person to congratulate him on qualifying — which he said was one of the best moments of his life. He’s not the first one in his family to make an Olympic Games though, as his father Nick was on Great Britain’s Olympic swimming team at the 1996 Atlanta Games.

In the fall, Shackell will move on from Carmel, transferring to swim for Texas. But before that, he’ll likely be one of the youngest members of the U.S. Olympic swim team, where he’ll face the rest of the world in an event that the American men have been weak in this Olympic cycle. However, given his improvement trajectory and how he’s already the best in the nation as a teenager, the future is bright.

Regardless of where Shackell ends up next though, he’ll forever be an Olympian that came through the Carmel system. And that will be remembered, whether in the context of those who came before him like Mitchell, or through the young Carmel kids watching him in the stands at Lucas Oil Stadium.

“The legacy of Carmel High School and Carmel Swim Club is unmatched,” Shackell said. “We inspire each other and pass down the legacy from swimmer to swimmer, to the next generation.”