Disclaimer: Dolfin 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 Dolfin 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.
It was a week of great swims including several ‘fastest-evers’ between individual swims and relay splits. But there’s still nothing that compares to Bobby Finke‘s absurd mile.
Finke went 14:12.08, breaking the NCAA record by 10.4 seconds. He broke the American record by 6.2 seconds. He cut his own best time by 11 seconds. Of course, the 1650 is the NCAA’s longest race, which allows for an 11-second margin that would be impossible in a 50 free. But even relative to the event length, Finke’s race was unbelievable.
Finke dropped 1.27% compared to his former personal-best. He cut 1.2% from the NCAA record and 0.7% from the American record. Here’s what time drops of those percentages would look like in every other event, compared to current American/NCAA records:
Note: the NCAA and American records are now the same in every single SCY event on the men’s side.
| 1.20% | 0.72% | ||||
| Event | American/NCAA Record | Time Drop | Final Time | Time Drop | Final Time |
| 50 free | 17.63 | 0.21 | 17.42 | 0.13 | 17.50 |
| 100 free | 39.90 | 0.48 | 39.42 | 0.29 | 39.61 |
| 200 free | 1:29.15 | 1.07 | 1:28.08 | 0.64 | 1:28.51 |
| 500 free | 4:06.32 | 2.96 | 4:03.36 | 1.77 | 4:04.55 |
| 100 back | 43.49 | 0.52 | 42.97 | 0.31 | 43.18 |
| 200 back | 1:35.73 | 1.15 | 1:34.58 | 0.69 | 1:35.04 |
| 100 breast | 49.69 | 0.60 | 49.09 | 0.36 | 49.33 |
| 200 breast | 1:47.91 | 1.29 | 1:46.62 | 0.78 | 1:47.13 |
| 100 fly | 42.80 | 0.51 | 42.29 | 0.31 | 42.49 |
| 200 fly | 1:37.35 | 1.17 | 1:36.18 | 0.70 | 1:36.65 |
| 200 IM | 1:38.13 | 1.18 | 1:36.95 | 0.71 | 1:37.42 |
| 400 IM | 3:33.42 | 2.56 | 3:30.86 | 1.54 | 3:31.88 |
If those times look ridiculous to you, that’s good. They should. Finke’s 14:12 was an incredibly impressive swim that stood out in a week of incredibly impressive swims. And Finke gets another shot to lower the mark at NCAAs next month.
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Not to dis Fink in any way as that swim was great, but most of the other record were simply already faster than the previous mile record. Also, using Smiths new 500 time which already cut from a record seems redundant. Not sure that the old was in line with some other ones and now seems comparable to say the 200 fly record which is a slower, but still insanely fast time.
The 500 Free NCAA record before Smith was Haas’ 4:08.19. Using that as the starting point, a 1.2% drop would be 2.97 seconds (rounding down) or a 4:05.22. The American record was Zane’s 4:07.25 and the 0.72% drop would be 1.78 seconds for a 4:05.47.