Start lists for tonight’s final in the men’s 4×200 free show a lot of changes for the major teams.
The United States is bringing back three of its four swimmers from prelims. Ryan Lochte will join Reed Malone, Michael Weiss, and Conor Dwyer, replacing Michael Klueh. This means that Clay Youngquist will not be swimming in this relay, despite having been selected for the team only for this event. The USA coaches have the discretion to put Youngquist on either the mixed or men’s free relay should they choose to do so, but that doesn’t seem all that likely.
Australia will be bringing in Cameron McEvoy and David McKeon to replace veteran Grant Hackett and Kurt Herzog.
Russia should improve on its 7th-place seeding from preliminaries with addition of Danila Izotov and Alexander Sukhorukov.
Two other big names coming in for the final include individual 200 free gold medalist James Guy for Great Britain and world record holder Paul Biedermann for Germany.
The United States has dominated this event internationally for almost a decade, and tonight looks like it might be one of the tightest finishes in a while. Great Britain, Australia, the United States, and Germany all had times within one second of each other this morning, and Russia’s substitutions should put them in the mix as well.
I feel like Youngquist tonight – all tapered, but nowhere to race.
Kind of disappointing for Youngquist that he didn’t get to swim at this meet. He could have been swimming at US Nationals instead.
I feel bad for Youngquist. If he swam about his time from World University Games he would have been faster than both Malone and Kleuh in the prelims. It also sucks that he missed out swimming at US Nationals just to go to Kazan and watch the entire meet from the stands. I would be a little upset if I were him.