Blueseventy Swim of the Week: Morozov Leads Battle For Fastest Man Alive

b70_520x70-r10

Disclaimer: Blueseventy 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 blueSeventy Swim 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.

Stop 1 of the 2018 World Cup featured a clash between two of the best versatile sprint types in the world.

American 19-year-old Michael Andrew has made clear his goal to be the fastest in the world at the 50s of all four strokes. But Russia’s Vladimir Morozov could certainly make a similar charge. The two battled head-to-head four times in Moscow, splitting their head-to-heads but with Morozov ultimately taking three golds to Andrew’s one.

Morozov won the 50 free (21.49 to 21.99) and 50 back (24.43 to 24.49) over Andrew, and also won the 100 free (48.26) in a race without Andrew. Andrew won the 100 fly (51.96) without a Morozov entry. Head-to-head, Andrew beat Morozov in the 50 fly (23.19 to 23.38) and 100 back (54.36 to 55.08), though the men took silver and bronze in both, behind Andrii Govorov and Mitch Larkin, respectively.

Morozov had a busy weekend, taking silvers as part of two Russian mixed relays. Andrew, meanwhile, added a bronze in the 50 breast.

Morozov wasn’t far off his best times from the 2017-2018 season – he was just two tenths off in his 50 back and five one-hundredths in his 50 free. His continued speed means Russia’s men’s relays should be absolutely stacked in 2019, featuring young world champs in back (Kliment Kolesnikov) and breast (Anton Chupkov) with the relay hero Morozov on the end. Russia’s men’s 4×100 free relay won Euros gold, and should be among the best relays heading into the 2019 World Championships.

Certainly there’s no discussion of ‘fastest man alive’ without mentioning Caeleb Dresselthe 2017 World Champ in the 50 free and 4th-place finisher in the 50 fly. Dressel is coming off a rough summer brought on in large part by a motorcycle accident, and didn’t compete in Moscow. While Dressel will certainly be in the mix in at least two of the stroke 50s, Morozov’s strong World Cup showing gives him the early lead over Andrew in the race to dominate the most 50s for 2018-2019.

WE MAKE SWIMMERS.

There isn’t a second that goes by when the team at blueseventy aren’t thinking about you. How you eat, breathe, train, play, win, lose, suffer and celebrate. How swimming is every part of what makes you tick. Aptly named because 70% of the earth is covered in water, blueseventy is a world leader in the pool and open water. Since 1993, we design, test, refine and craft products using superior materials and revolutionary details that equate to comfort, freedom from restriction and ultimately a competitive advantage in the water. This is where we thrive. There is no substitute and no way around it. We’re all for the swim.

2016 blueseventy banner for Swim of the Week b70_300x300-aftsVisit blueseventy.com/pages/swim to learn more.

Instagram: @blueseventy

Twitter: @blueseventy

Facebook: facebook.com/blueseventy

blueseventy is a SwimSwam partner.

In This Story

1
Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Notify of

1 Comment
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
samuel huntington
5 years ago

small corrections – the meet was in Kazan not Moscow and Dressel did not win the 50 fly at Worlds (4th place).

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

Read More »