Caeleb Dressel Misses Olympic Final Of Men’s 100 Butterfly With 51.57 For 13th In Semifinals

2024 PARIS SUMMER OLYMPIC GAMES

MEN’S 100 BUTTERFLY – SEMIFINALS

Caeleb Dressel of the US will not have the chance to defend his Olympic gold in the 100 butterfly as he finished 13th in semifinals with a time of a 51.57. Dressel is the World Record holder in the event, with a best time of a 49.45 that he swam in Tokyo.

Dressel had a busy day, most notably swimming in the final of the men’s 50 freestyle just over 30 minutes before he swam in the first semifinal of the 100 fly. He also had a busy morning, swimming in prelims of the 100 fly as well as swimming the butterfly leg on the mixed 4×100 medley relay for the US.

His time in prelims of a 50.83 would have made the final as it took a 51.08 to make it back for tomorrow night’s final. Dressel was seen emotional after the race.

Dressel’s return from the 2022 World Championships is still noteworthy. Dressel withdrew in the middle of the 2022 World Championships due to medical reasons and did not compete in the 100 butterfly there. He then spent eight months away from the sport before returning to the pool. After almost a year away from competition, Dressel returned in May 2023, just over a month before 2023 US Summer Nationals.

He has consistently been improving since his comeback, notably helping the US to gold in the men’s 4×100 free relay earlier this week. He also made the final in the 50 free and has the chance to swim on the 4×100 mixed medley relay and the men’s 4×100 medley relay in the final 2 days of competition.

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Tracy Kosinski
4 seconds ago

You guys are crazy. Caleb seems happy and is enjoying himself with his family at the Olympics. He has enough medals as does the USA. So you didn’t get 20 golds…Chill out.

Observor
42 minutes ago

How about the dorm living situations with vegan cuisine. What happen to the meat, potatoes? and gravy! 😀

chickenlamp
1 hour ago

Caeleb was the face of USA Swimming for years. And he stepped up time and time again, often exceeding the already high expectations. There’s only so long people can withstand that kind of pressure until they crack. In retrospect, I think he was so good that holes and issues in the US team went unnoticed. It’s not fair to Caeleb to expect him to carry the whole men’s team.

I hope this weekend he regroups and puts down a swim that he’s proud on the medley relay. I don’t know what his plans are after Paris (he might not know yet either). But I can hopefully speak for most swimming fans when I say it’s ok if he puts… Read more »

Weinstein-Madden-Ledecky-Gemmell
1 hour ago

The performances of Alexy/Guiliano, Ryan Murphy, and most recently Caeleb Dressel in the individual events puts into question the men’s 4 x 100 meter medley relay.

Smglsn12
Reply to  Weinstein-Madden-Ledecky-Gemmell
51 minutes ago

Armstrong will find another 46 mid

Lisa
Reply to  Weinstein-Madden-Ledecky-Gemmell
48 minutes ago

They also gonna have Armstrong who just went sub 47 with Murphy is super consistent on the relay just went 52.3 this week and Dressel just swims 50.1

Hank
Reply to  Weinstein-Madden-Ledecky-Gemmell
44 minutes ago

It keeps trolls in business for a while longer at least

OldNotDead
1 hour ago

I’ve always thought the pure sprinter trifecta is the 50/100 free and 100 fly – so, it surprises me that both the 50 free and 100 fly have a slot in the same session, even if the 100 fly was a semi vs a final for the 50. A lot of the pure sprinters do this triple.

kaz
Reply to  OldNotDead
21 minutes ago

Hope LA adding a day to swimming can help fix this issue.

PVK
1 hour ago

Embarrassing!

50free
1 hour ago

We need to move olympic trials back to Omaha or some place smaller. Our swimmers literally couldn’t handle the hype and they are completely unprepared. Worst Olympics of my lifetime.

Towelie
Reply to  50free
1 hour ago

I really doubt that the trials pool has anything to do with it. The men have definitely underperformed, but the women have been really good. The men were expected to do better than they have, but finke was really the only us male that people thought could get an individual gold. It seems more likely that something happened between trials and now that made like 80% of the men miss their taper.

Last edited 1 hour ago by Towelie
Barty’s Bakery
Reply to  Towelie
1 hour ago

Sorry but that is absolutely rubbish. During trials people were calling Murphy for the backstroke double, Caeleb for 50 free and 100 fly, Alexy for 100 free. Some even had Heilman winning the 200 fly.

You can’t go back and pretend no one expected US men to get a bunch of individual golds.

Towelie
Reply to  Barty’s Bakery
1 hour ago

I meant pre-trials expectations, but if you look at the swimswam predictions from the staff they had finke in the mile, caeleb in 100 fly, and Ryan Murphy in the 2 back. Those were all reasonable predictions, but I don’t think anyone besides finke was the favorite before trials. If you go by swimswam comments obviously people were saying more us men could win events because most of the commenters are from the US.

Also, there is no way that anybody in the world thought heilman would win gold. He wasn’t even expected to medal

I miss the ISL (go dawgs)
Reply to  50free
1 hour ago

Trials hype wasn’t the problem, it actually got them very excited and made them swim well and gave them confidence for this week. Something got lost in between the two meets.

50free
Reply to  I miss the ISL (go dawgs)
1 hour ago

I mean we’ve had that same gap between trials every year. This year the trials dramatically changed.

Elle Gee
Reply to  50free
39 minutes ago

The time gap was the same, so US Swimming needs to look at the other variables: the re-taper, the circumstances of the training camp, the travel, the coaching, the living/sleeping conditions of the village and the training camp, intangibles like team unity, etc. Lots to ponder before LA28.

UsedToBeFast
Reply to  I miss the ISL (go dawgs)
11 minutes ago

Our men are just weaker than they’ve ever been, plus the stars didn’t live up to expectations. But make I mistake we were already weaker on the world stage.

kaz
1 hour ago

Why does his two best events have to be I. The same day? My god.

MTK
Reply to  kaz
1 hour ago

Dressel, Liendo and Grousset all great at both of these events and yeah, they should be on different days. Why not have 1 of them early in the schedule and 1 later on?

Joel
Reply to  MTK
1 hour ago

McKeown swam 2x 200 tonight. Marchand swam 2×200 the other night. So did Regan

kaz
Reply to  Joel
1 hour ago

But they were bit further apart, not just 30 minutes.

Aus Con
Reply to  kaz
1 hour ago

No they weren’t… Kaylee’s was 30 minutes apart

BrianD
Reply to  Aus Con
43 minutes ago

… and she struggled

‘Murica
Reply to  Joel
34 minutes ago

Kaylee nearly missed the final, that isn’t the argument you think it is.

Yabo
Reply to  kaz
10 minutes ago

He never struggled with this double before

About Anya Pelshaw

Anya Pelshaw

Anya has been with SwimSwam since June 2021 as both a writer and social media coordinator. She was in attendance at the 2022, 2023, and 2024 Women's NCAA Championships writing and doing social media for SwimSwam. She also attended 2023 US Summer Nationals as well as the 2024 European Championships …

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