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.
The Harvard men topped Ivy League foes Princeton and Yale over the weekend in the annual HYP meet, but maybe the most significant swim came tucked right in the middle of the two-day showdown.
The 200 medley relay kicked off day 2, with Harvard taking the title by well over two seconds. The key was the butterfly leg, where senior Steven Tan went 20.02 to blow out the field by 1.2 seconds.
That would have been the 5th-fastest split in the NCAA Championship final last year, behind only Joseph Schooling (19.45), Andrew Sansoucie (19.86), Andrew Liang (19.93) and Luke Kaliszak (19.94). Sansoucie is now graduated from Missouri.
Harvard didn’t even qualify for NCAAs in this relay a year ago despite using stud anchor Dean Farris at the Ivy League Championships. Last year, Tan swam backstroke on the relay, going 22.0, while Farris split 18.8 on the end. This year, Harvard already has Koya Osada going 22.3 on backstroke. Add in Tan’s 20.0 and a similar anchor leg from Farris and Harvard could be looking at an NCAA qualifying swim. The A cut is a fast 1:24.82, with a 1:25.62 B cut.
At the very least, a Tan-Farris pairing could give Harvard a frightening final 100.
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I didn’t know Schooling split 19.4 -that’s amazing
Last year he was a bit off. His best split was 19.36 in 2016 NCAA.
ok that is fast.
Harvard is very, very good!
Tennessee with 22 Breast split…Oh yea
I could see Farris at the front and O’Hara or Kim at the back of that relay too. Farris was 22.3 to the feet on his best 100 back last year.