Michael Andrew Breaks Two National Age Group Records on Last Night of Junior Nationals

Michael Andrew of Team Andrew Indie Swimming capped off his first run at the summer Junior National Championships with a pair of National Age Group Records on Friday night.

First, in the men’s 200 IM C-Final, he swam a 2:05.13, which knocks almost a second-and-a-half off of Michael Phelps’ old record of 2:06.50 from the year 2000. Note that this is the same year where Phelps would later, at 15, qualify for the Olympics in the 200 fly.

Andrew’s coach, who is his father Peter, has been raving about some of the incredible swims that Michael has been doing in practice, but that hadn’t quite translated to meets the way they’d hoped coming into the U.S. Open and Junior Nationals: by far the two biggest meet he’s swum in thus far in his young career.

Things all came together in this 200 IM, though, which somewhat justifies that an almost exclusive diet of ‘high intensity race pace training’ can be effective in longer races.

Comparative splits between Andrew’s swim and Phelps 2000 record:

Phelps’ old record was done in a runner-up performance at the 2000 Cadillac Swim Challenge Series stop in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

What immediately jumps out is that Andrew attacked the backstroke leg much harder than Phelps did, and remember that Phelps was a very good backstroker as a younger swimmer. Andrew didn’t close quite as well as the old record splits, but still did so nicely considering how hard he went out in the first 100 meters.

Andrew would add to that a second record in his more traditional event, the 50 free, where he was a 23.38. That broke his own record of 23.47 set earlier this year. The old record of 23.50 was set by Bolles’ Caeleb Dressel in 2011, which Andrew has now cleared twice. (Incidentally, Dressel has been having an incredible meet himself, breaking multiple NAG Records as well).

For those curious, Phelps got his time to a 2:00.86 by the time he finished in the 15-16 age group, and Dressel’s newest 15-16 record in the 50 free, done in the prelims of the event, was a 22.39.