After Selina Hocke‘s 31st place finish in the 100 backstroke, Germany has decided to fly backstroker, Lisa Graf, to Barcelona for the medley relay on Sunday. At 16 years old, Hocke is still very young and inexperienced. According to the German news source, www.bild.de, Hocke ran into a mental block, she was overwhelmed with everything going on around her. She expects to perform better in her 50m backstroke after finishing over a second slower in the 100m backstroke than she did at the German Championships.
At the German National Championships, Jenny Mensing finished first with a 1:01.50 but decided to not go to Barcelona because of injuries disrupting her training. Selina Hocke was second with her time of 1:01.52. That time was almost a second and a half faster than her time yesterday of 1:02.94. Hocke’s replacement in the relay, Lisa Graf, finished third at the German Championships with a time of 1:01.90.
Flying in swimmers mid-meet is not considered normal. Hocke and the rest of the German World Championship Team had time to prepare and taper for the meet. Now we just have to wait and see how prepared Graf is for her relay swim. Selina Hocke may not be having the best meet, but she tapered for this meet. Unless Germany was planning to take Graf the whole time, she is most likely not tapered for this meet. This will be a big gamble for Germany.
All this instant judgement on the 16 yr old by the coaches is ridiculous. She won the spot and flying in a sub who didn’t do it at the time sets a poor precedent which maybe they don’t worry about. Maybe their is a lot of things they can look st. All this exactitude to why things happen and don’t is poor. They were concerned about their lack of success last year and maybe they need to look at themselves in there lack of fielding full teams to begin with.
DSV nominated Lisa as a relay backup about a month ago. I can dig up that article later if anyone is interested.
Wasn’t entire month ago but still a few weeks:
swimsportnews.de/index.php/swimsportnews-de-de/22-kurzmeldungen-de/2621-schwimm-wm-dsv-nominiert-lisa-graf-nach