American swimmer Michael Andrew is heading home early from the 2024 Swimming World Cup Series, citing ongoing sickness.
“Looking forward to feeling healthy in preparations for Worlds,” Andrew said in a social media post, referring to December’s Short Course World Championships in Budapest.
Andrew currently ranks 31st in the series’ season-long standings, unable to secure any prize money in either of the first two stops while battling illness. His best finishes were 5th in the 50 breast (26.34) and 8th in the 100 IM (53.19) in Shanghai; and 6th in both the 50 breast and 100 IM.
Andrew finished 4th in the World Cup standings in 2023.
Andrew, now 25, won an Olympic gold medal at the Tokyo Games in 2021 as the breaststroke leg of the World Record-setting American men’s 400 medley relay. He also has 1 World Championship in long course (2022 – mixed 400 medley) and six in short course.
After missing the U.S. team for the Paris 2024 Games, Andrew announced that for the first time in his swimming career, he would be training under a coach who wasn’t his father Peter Andrew. Michael Andrew still has not announced who he would be training under, saying that he’s still waiting for final approvals.
When is he going to start training? Put some mileage in. Race the 100’s and the 200 IM. Yikes.
Next up he is scaling down his racing distance to 25 yards and entering summer league meets against 9-10 year olds.
Everything seems to be getting only worse for
him. The man needs to take a year off.
I think he’s been taking time off lol. What he needs to do is the opposite? Put more time in?
Yeah, that should fix things
Dipping out on the last leg, where have we seen that before?
He’s about to have the worst world championships ever and get completely eviscerated by swimming viewers for taking up someone’s spot. It’s like watching the world’s slowest car crash
Plot twist: his new training coach is himself
The squandered potential almost physically hurts
That he needs approval from somewhere gives me hope he made a good choice but right now it does indeed look like MA is coaching MA
I don’t know. A lot of folks would have wanted to do what he did Most of us are not faster swimmers like Michael