Olivia Peoples Swims Fly on Florida’s 4×50 Free Relay, Splits 22.25

2024 Women’s NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships

When we say ‘freestyle,’ collective swimdom agrees that we’re referring to ‘front crawl,’ but by rule, a swimmer can use any style to swim a freestyle race.

And so, in the 200 yard freestyle relay on Thursday, Florida junior Olivia Peoples did just that.

After Bella Sims led off with 21.94 and Isabel Ivy clocked a 21.33 on leg 2, Peoples dove in and swam butterfly. When she got to the 25 wall, she did a flip turn and continued home in butterfly, splitting a 22.25 for her ‘freestyle’ leg. Micayla Cronk finished with 21.71 for a combined 1:27.23 and 10th-place finish overall.

Despite the butterfly leg, Florida was only off their seed time by .72.

Why would Peoples swim butterfly? Because she thought she’d be faster than with freestyle. And in fact, she was, indeed, .14 faster than she had been at SECs in February, when she split a 22.39 freestyle leg on the same relay.

Headed into NCAAs, Peoples’s best flat-start freestyle this season was 22.76, the 5th-fastest on the team. Ahead of her were Cronk (21.85), Sims (21.88), and Ivey (22.27), all from the SEC Championships. Ekaterina Nikonova had gone 22.47 at the Georgia Fall Invitational, but she was injured for NCAAs.

That left Peoples to fill in, and in her estimation, she would be faster for her team swimming butterfly.

She was the only swimmer of the Gators’ finals foursome at NCAAs who split faster at NCAAs than she did at SECs (where she swam the ‘front crawl’).

Florida Splits, 200 Free Relay, NCAAs (change from SECs):

Note that, according to USA Swimming and NCAA rules, as long as the swimmer touches the walls at both ends of the pool, it is a legal ‘freestyle’ swim. Therefore, while she chose to do butterfly, Peoples was not obligated to touch either wall with two hands. Thus the flip turn.

You can watch the race here. Florida is in lane 3; Peoples is the third leg of the relay.

 

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Swamaroundtheworld
7 months ago

bold move cotton, love to see it pay off

SwimCloud
7 months ago

Sophie Yendell from Pitt was 22.1 at ACCs with an open turn on the medley relay.

Are these two the fastest splits this year?

Mr. Seidman
7 months ago

Wow! The only time I’ve seen this was when Brad Kline swam backstroke instead of freestyle in a relay for UNC in ‘01 or ‘00. Impressive!

snailSpace
7 months ago

I honestly love stuff like this. Makes the sport interesting.

Tea rex
7 months ago

❤️❤️❤️
Freestyle is easy, only people who are cool and tough do butterfly

Entgegen
7 months ago

How does this rank all time

Admin
Reply to  Entgegen
7 months ago

Among butterfly splits with a flip-turn? 1st as far as I know.

Maggie MacNeil has the fastest 50 fly split with any kind of turn at 21.85: https://swimswam.com/2022-art-adamson-invite-maggie-macneil-clocks-fastest-ever-50-fly-split-at-21-85/

Paul Windrath
8 months ago

Even more amazing is it does not appear Peoples took a breathe the entire 50!

SWIM SAM
8 months ago

She’s a die hard butterflier

Also it was .2 faster than what she split on the medley relay

I'm so glad
Reply to  SWIM SAM
7 months ago

She didn’t get to flip turn on the medley.

Vaswammer
Reply to  SWIM SAM
7 months ago

Flip turn vs. open turn?

bevo’s horns
Reply to  Vaswammer
7 months ago

Flip turn

Vaswammer
Reply to  bevo’s horns
7 months ago

I should have been more clear. Flip turn probably accounted for the faster time (0.2 faster than in the medley relay).

Last edited 7 months ago by Vaswammer

About Anne Lepesant

Anne Lepesant

Anne Lepesant is the mother of four daughters, all of whom swam in college. With an undergraduate degree from Princeton (where she was an all-Ivy tennis player) and an MBA from INSEAD, she worked for many years in the financial industry, both in France and the U.S. Anne is currently …

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