Dressel & Orsi To Join 50 Breast Skins Field In Match #4’s Final Day

2020 INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING LEAGUE – MATCH 4

Versatile sprinters Caeleb Dressel and Marco Orsi will both try their hand at the 50 breast skin race in today’s ISL meet. That’ll be one of three head-to-head showdowns between the two today.

Full day 2 start lists here

Dressel & Orsi Battle Three Times

Iron chose breaststroke as the skin stroke for the men after winning yesterday’s medley relay. That was due in large part to Emre Sakci‘s dominating win in the individual 50 breast, but the downside of that decision is depth – Ross Murdoch was just 7th in that race and got his points stolen via jackpot.

Iron will try to have the best of both worlds, using Sakci in the 50 breast skin race, but also entering standout sprinter Marco Orsithe 100 IM champ from the team’s first meet.

The Cali Condors will use Caeleb Dressel there, too. He was third in the individual 50 breast yesterday, but has proven he’s a tough multi-round competitor in skin strokes. If Dressel can make the skins final in breaststroke, that’s a gut punch to the league, which probably can’t avoid Dressel’s skins dominance in any stroke except maybe backstroke (where there are so many other top threats to contend with).

Dressel has five event entries today after swimming five times yesterday. That will give him ten total events and up to 12 total swims if he makes all three rounds of the skin race. That would even outdo his heavy event load last week, which included nine total events and 11 overall swims.

Women’s Skin Race

In the women’s skin race (backstroke), the individual 50 back field will remain mostly unchanged. New York will swim Arina Surkova over Tevyn Waddell as the only substitution.

Cali’s Olivia Smoliga will be the heavy favorite as she’s dominated the 50 back in both of her meets so far this year.

Other Lineup Notes

DC will try out Andrew Loy in the 100 IM after using Tommy Cope there last week. They’ve also swapped Zane Grothe into the 200 free alongside Zach Apple. For the skins, they’ll focus on giving Ian Finnerty as much rest as possible, not even swimming him in the individual 100 breast to save up for his skin race chances. The skin race is his only entry today.

Meanwhile, Cali will use Townley Haas in the 200 free. Haas swam only relays yesterday. Last week, Cali used Haas only in the 400 free, but he struggled there and they elected not to use him in the 200 the following day. This time around, Haas should be more rested for the shorter event.

Iron will use star Katinka Hosszu in three individual races today: the 200 fly, 100 IM and 400 IM. Hosszu struggled some yesterday, but did win the 200 fly and 400 IM in her first match last week.

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About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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