Blueseventy Swim of the Week: Texas Women Swim Nation-Leading Relay

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.

In a dual with Texas A&M last week, the Texas women put up what is by far the fastest 400 free relay in the nation this season – and they did it without even swimming their best lineup.

The Longhorns went 3:17.41, which would have won the dual meet by five seconds had the meet not already been out of hand and Texas exhibitioning its top swimmers. That team was built in four sub-50 splits – an impressive feat considering only 27 swimmers in the entire nation have broken 50 individually so far this season.

The relay was freshman Julia Cook (49.70), senior Anelise Diener (49.44), senior Remedy Rule (49.52) and junior Claire Adams (48.75), and came at the end of a long dual meet, meaning none of these athletes was entirely fresh. But the relay could potentially be even faster, as Texas has at least two other options come post-season.

Freshman Grace Ariola has a lifetime-best of 48.30, better than the best times of Diener or Rule. But Ariola had already swum her four events against A&M and couldn’t compete on the relay. Meanwhile from the B relay, senior Brooke Hansen outsplit two of the three flying start splits on the A relay, going 49.28. Hansen was on this relay at NCAAs last year and went 48.6, so she’s another likely option come NCAAs.

In fact, just totaling up the lifetime-bests of Texas’s top swimmers individually yields an incredible 3:12.18 projected time: faster than Texas went at NCAAs last year (without Cook and Ariola in the mix) and good enough for 7th in the nation based on 2018 NCAA results:

Swimmer Time
Julia Cook 47.82
Claire Adams 47.46
Grace Ariola 48.30
Anelise Diener 48.60
3:12.18

Adding in drops from even mediocre relay exchanges from the final three legs means this team can probably go at least a second faster. Last year, it took 3:07.9 to win NCAAs, but only 3:10.5 to take third. No matter who winds up on this relay at the end of the season, there’s a very good chance Texas will be among the top teams in the nation when the dust settles.

 

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

0
Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Notify of

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

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 »