Three weeks separate us from the start of the swimming portion of the Olympic Games, and Brazilian sprint stars Bruno Fratus and Marcelo Chierighini put on a clinic in practice at Auburn’s James E. Martin Aquatic Center today.
Thanks to Auburn assistant coach Ozzie Quevedo, who filmed Fratus’ and Chierighini’s impressive swims and posted them to his Twitter account. According to Quevedo’s tweets, Fratus sprinted his way to the way in 21.8 seconds for a 50 free, while Chierighini clocked a 48.8 in a 100 free.
Fratus’ swim:
21.8 from @BFratus ? No biggie. Hey recruits and world, this is what we do! #WarEagle #RoadToRio???????? @swimswamnews pic.twitter.com/TFsAFXjHSX
— Ozzie Quevedo (@OzzieQuevedo) July 16, 2016
Chierighini’s swim:
48.8 from @Mchierighini Recruits and entire world, this is what we do! #WarEagle #RoadToRio???????? @swimswamnews pic.twitter.com/zmYcmTcYjL
— Ozzie Quevedo (@OzzieQuevedo) July 17, 2016
Fratus and Chierighini are two leaders of a deep Brazilian sprint group that will be gunning for individual and relay medals at their home Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
To put their practice swims done today into context, Fratus’ swim would rank just outside of the world’s top 10 for this season. He owns the #1 time in the world this season with a 21.37 from the Brazil Open in December of 2015. Chierighini, meanwhile, would’ve been a few tenths away from cracking the top 25 in the world this season in the 100 free. He holds the #12 time of 48.20, however, which was swum at the 2016 Maria Lenk Trophy in April.
It’s unclear from the video if a scoreboard and touch pads were used to determine the sprinters’ times, but it looks as though the Auburn coaches were going off of their stop watches. While that leaves something to be desired in terms of precision of their times, those are some pretty impressive sprints for an in-practice time trial three weeks out from the Olympics.
If you want to read more analysis on the sprint situation in Rio, check out our special Olympic previews for the men’s 50 free and the men’s 100 free.
Manaudou is obvious favorite, but if you want a fun dark horse how about the only other gold medalist returning to the event, Anthony Ervin.
Since his return from a decade away from competition, he’s managed to be competitive and make the main US teams each time out. And while his performance in Kazan was certainly disappointing(I had trouble understanding how he performed so badly, including a primary role in 4×100 implosion). Whatever the reason for last year’s downward performance tilt (illness? training? other?), he returned this year making good progress throughout the GP/PSS series.
He has long been comparatively weak on opening techniques (Dive, flight, entry, underwaters, breakout, …) in the 50 but has been as fast… Read more »
…nah
Cool but how many Gatorades did they chug prior to those swims?
Was also reminded of that! This is the kind of thing we, as a comment section, should support. Videos like this is are a good thing!
sorry not very impressed with the need to post this…….don’t remember too many tweets at USA Trials from Brett (or other Au coaches) about Auburn swimmers, especially Auburn swimmers training at Auburn. To me, it looks like desperation and lack of confidence……someone said it before, you would never see Durden, Marsh, Bauerle, or Meehan tweet about performances in practice. class vs classless?
Like, maybe if they both hopped out of the pool and started doing the old DX crotch chop, sure, call that classless. This is just some videos of dudes swimming.
(I would also like to say that I would very much welcome such a video.)
Sorry,
but maybe is an American thing, but down here(Brazil) is a normal thing to post times at training and that type of time trials.LAst week Pinheiros(the most famous Brazilian swimming club Team) made one of that with several swimmers.I just don’t get it your “class vs classless.”
let your swimming do your talking at THE meet, not at practice.
You guys need to chill the hell out… Just saying…
Bama is clearly winning the state rivalry……
That’s quite embarrassing to say “hey recruits and world, this is what we do” when you don’t have the results to back it up. The men were 10th at NCAAs only by the hair of their chubby chin chin (and some last minute diving points) and the women fell to a dismal 33rd.
Recruits wants results. Not social media posts about how fast a post grad went for one swim (that looked like was set up to be filmed solely for the purpose of posting on social media). Yikes.
Aussie Olympic swim team arrive at auburn tomorrow.
Auburn?
No more exotic location like Costa Rica, Panama or something?
YAAAAAAASSSS – They can take a bus trip to Manchester Al. Happy Days!
Looks like Fratus will be the main rival for Manaudou.
Sorry, but Adrian will take the gold thank you very much #manaudWHO
Love to see McEvoy pipping them all & winning the double 50-100.
Robbo whilst CW is not here -lets go for the 50 100 200 400 relay 800 relay -5 gold. That should get him a seat to the Space station .
Hey G.I.N.A. riding that space ship all the way!!!!
it will be a Russian one unless he waits till he is 50.
Lol hey recruits look at how fast a couple of pros go and not how fast our actual college swimmers go. Watch times are always way fast anyways.
Yeah.. That ‘Hey recruits and entire world” thing sounds like super desperation to me.
Embarrassing really. Adrian and Earvin are probably swimming those times or faster now but you’d never in a milion years see Durden tweeting it like that.
Sorry to say to you, but Fratus doing sub22 before taper is incredible.Fratus made sub22 in season only one time in his life.21.9 at some USA GP last year(or the year before). All other sub22 in his life are made in rested or tapered meetings.Adrian likes to rest a bit before GP´s, and that makes a big difference.Remember Adrian doing 21.6-21.8 in several GP’s.
eh, given the same condition, 50 free is usually faster when you have no one else on the pool creating waves and all that. Popov swam his one time 21.64 WR in a specially-arranged time trial when both lanes next to him were empty. Otherwise he was never within 0.2 seconds of that WR. Not in 4 olympics, not in 4 world championships.
Popov was tapered.And that don’t change the fact the two(Adrian and Fratus) have the same PB(21.37) and swim in season in totally different way.We will know in some weeks if it was just an Auburn PR stunt or a really great time for now.
Sure. But Popov was also tapered/rested/what have you in all olympics and world championships, and yet he was nowhere near that 21.64 which he did in a quiet lane.
I don’t doubt that Fratus and Chierghini swam those times (or something similar accounting for the accuracy of stop-watches), but we have often heard over the past few years similar claims that so and so Brazilian sprinters blitzed fast times untapered promising much faster times when they are tapered, only to swim disappointingly slow at world championships/pan pacs/pan ams.
Excellent points. Open lanes around you must be worth a tenth or two in the 50.
Does someone really have to mention that a 21.8 hand timed 50 is still very likely not sub 22?
Someone does?
Who?
Did you time it yourself?
What??? Are you talking to me?
The only one who may have some doubt about the accuracy of the times is “swimmer”, the first commenter.
I, in fact, wrote in the above:
“I don’t doubt that Fratus and Chierghini swam those times ”
https://swimswam.com/fratus-hits-21-8-chierighini-48-8-sprint-practice-auburn/#comment-440641
Could go either way though.
I am glad for Coach Ozzie. He finally got some print space on Swimswam. This is CLEARLY the highlight of his coaching career. Go Warchicken – Cluck, cluck.