Cal Men Add Two Olympians to Their Roster for the Spring Semester

by Spencer Penland 101

January 17th, 2025 ACC, College, News

CAL vs USC (COMBINED DUAL)

  • Friday, January 17, 2025
  • Spieker Aquatics Complex, Berkeley, CA
  • SCY (25 Yards)
  • Live results available on Meet Mobile
    • following the conclusion of the meet, the PDF results file will be included in our meet recap

Cal is taking on former Pac-12 opponent USC at the Spieker Aquatics Complex this afternoon. In true Cal fashion, it’s been an eventful week for the Golden Bears, as we’ve already reported on a pair of midseason additions to their roster in Lars Antoniak and Camille Henveaux. The kick off this meet revealed another pair of midseason additions for Cal, both on the men’s side and both Olympians.

Just two days after Cal announced they had signed Camille Henveaux, her older brother, Lucas Henveaux, is now back on Cal’s roster after having competed for the Golden Bears during the 2022-2023 season. Henveaux, who is a Belgian Olympian, was a big contributor to Cal’s 2023 NCAA Championship title, finishing 9th in the 500 free (4:10.50) and 1650 free (14:44.14), also helping Cal to a 3rd place finish in the 800 free relay with a 1:31.90 split. The 2022-2023 season was the only season he competed for Cal, and he was listed as a Graduate Student on their roster for that season.

Henveaux is 24.

After his year competing with Cal, Henveaux has been highly successful on the world stage. He notched a 4th-place finish in the 400 free at the 2024 LC World Championships in Doha last February. Henveaux then competed for Belgium at the Paris Olympics this past summer, where he finished 3rd in prelims of the 200 free (1:46.04), but then missed out on qualifying for finals. He was also 12th in prelims of the 400 free, and 19th in the 800 free. More recently, Henveaux earned the bronze medal in the 200 free and 400 free at the SC World Championships in Budapest last month.

The other addition is France’s Mewen Tomac, who is 23 and turns 24 in September. This is an interesting addition because Tomac had announced his commitment to Cal last January, saying then he would be beginning with Cal in the fall. However, he didn’t end up competing for Cal, or on their roster this fall, but he’s now racing for them today. Like Henveaux, Tomac is an Olympian.

Tomac is primarily a backstroker, who competed for France at the Paris Olympics this past summer. He had a great performance there, finishing 4th in the 200 back with his career best of 1:55.38. He also made semifinals in the 100 back. At the 2024 SC World Championships last month, Tomac earned the bronze medal in the 200 back, swimming a 1:49.93.

Tomac is already making a splash, having just led off Cal’s ‘B’ 200 medley relay in 21.40 in his first yards race of his career. The addition of a backstroker Tomac’s caliber introduces some interesting options for Cal on their medley relays. If Tomac can get up to speed quick enough, he may be able to take the backstroke duty from Bjorn Seeliger on the 200 medley relay, which would allow Seeliger, Cal’s fastest 50 freestyler (18.27 career best), to move to the anchor. Alternatively, Seeliger is such a pure sprinter, he may be able to move to fly on that relay, if Tomac can get his 50 back down close to Seeliger’s.

All of that is speculation, however, what isn’t speculation is that Cal just added two huge impact swimmers to their roster as the ACC Championships sit just over a month away. Henveaux is set to race the 200 free and 500 free today, while Tomac will be in the 100 back, 200 back, and 200 IM.

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26 days ago

Let Cal have their fun – next year they lose:

  • Seeliger
  • Alexy
  • Lasco
  • Jensen
  • Jett
  • Henveaux
  • Hansen
  • Rose

That’s potentially all their relay pieces except Okadome and maybe a 4th freestyler.

And you know what? I bet they’ll still be top 4 next year.

Noah Fence
28 days ago

I feel like the lack of an age gap in the NCAA is a much bigger problem than “foreign swimmers taking spots.”

Like ok some kid from Europe is faster than you, so you’ve gotta go to a different school, whatever.

But a 24 year old being in the same recruiting pool as a 17/18 year old? Just doesn’t sit right with me and feels like it goes against what NCAA and amateur sport is supposed to be.

oxyswim
Reply to  Noah Fence
28 days ago

While I think you’re right, the problem with this complaint is that it’s worse in football because of the differences in physical development in a violent sport and the age gaps are even bigger there. There’s nothing to be done when that sport is going to drive precedents.

This Guy
28 days ago

For everyone missing the ISL, this is about as close as we are going to get.

I’m going to sit back and enjoy the swimming and let the chips fall where they may over the next few years. It’s going to be messy and certainly interesting but we are going to see some absolutely insane swimming over the next couple years until things get figured out.

Enjoy the ride at least a little bit

swim4fun
29 days ago

Next thing you know, Hugo Gonzales is back too

Concerned swim fan
29 days ago

How are 17 year old California boys supposed to compete with 24 year olds? State schools using taxpayer money to pay mercenaries from Europe to protect their egos. University of California system was set up to provide high quality education first and foremost to California residents and is subsidized by California tax payer money. Now almost impossible to get into the school, even harder to find a spot on a college swim team in CA (unless you have $80k an year to pay for Whittier, Occidental etc)

Used to be someone like Will Moore, Jeff Natalizio, John Door was able to walk on or swim for books and make NCAA’s at Cal. None of these guys would even get… Read more »

BR32
Reply to  Concerned swim fan
28 days ago

D3 SCIAC schools usually offer pretty good financial aid and there’s always other d1 schools in CA in different conferences like cal poly, ucsb, ucsd etc but yeah it’s kinda ridiculous.

mds
Reply to  Concerned swim fan
27 days ago

Dorr

Reid
29 days ago

hell yeah go bears

barelyaswammer
29 days ago

Braden, can you substantiate the rumors that SMU is in talks to purchase the services of the gold medal winning Chinese 4x100m medley relay team? $8MM is the number I’ve heard, but I could be a little off. Would instantly change the scoring landscape. I think Pan and Xu in particular would be dynamic in SCY.

ArtVanDeLegh10
29 days ago

Even with adding these 2, I still don’t think CAL can finish ahead of IU and Texas.