Olympic and World Champion Caeleb Dressel swam for Jason Lezak’s Cali Condors this past season on the International Swimming League. For Dressel, he knew racing against the top sprinters in the world would be great training, and that was a big reason he signed on to compete in the inaugural season. Dressel closed the season at the ISL Finale wining four individual events including the brutal skins race. In the video above Dressel breaks down his strategy for the skins race, and he does drop the word endurance, noting two minutes is not a lot of time to recovery between sprints when you’re swimming all-out.
Looking ahead, let’s play the prediction game way too early for 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials.
DRESSEL US OLYMPIC TRIALS EVENT SCHEDULE: I think Dressel swims his stock schedule in Omaha, 50-100 free, and 100 fly. He swims the 200 free, but only in prelims. I also think he’ll test 200 IM. If he’s on, I could see him swimming the semi and final at Olympic Trials.
DRESSEL US OLYMPIC TRIALS 100m FREE: I’m only getting specific about one race this far out, 100m free. 100m fly was his best event at the 2019 World Championships this past summer, popping the 49.50 world record. I think 100m free will matter more to him in Omaha. He got too close to the 100m free world record this past summer, Cesar Ceilo’s supers-suited 46.91 from the 2009 World Champs in Rome. While Dressel’s best taper will certainly be at the 2020 Olympic Games, he’s going to race almost fully rested at U.S. Trials. I don’t think he’ll take any chances.
Dressel’s 2019 World Championship 100m free — 46.96
My 100m free U.S. Olympic Trials Dressel prediction — 46.84
But who cares what I think. What do you think?
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This is a Gold Medal Media production presented by SwimOutlet.com. Host Gold Medal Mel Stewart is a 3-time Olympic medalist and the co-founder of SwimSwam.com, a Swimming News website.
Dressel will go in favourite in Tokyo but Chalmers has had a good start to the year and looks good.
The last part gave me goosebumps.
Quality racing over quantity! That’s why he is so special and can amaze us everytime he shows up
Would hate racing everyday…an unintended subtle dig