Olympic gold medalist Ryan Lochte is finishing his preparations for this weekend’s US Open Championships (he’ll be at the Sarasota site), and showed off on Tuesday with a 23.37 underwater 50 dolphin kick from a push.
While we’ve seen faster underwater 50 meter kicks (like this one from Mitchell Whyte), from a push this is a very fast time. By comparison, at a meet in 2015, when Lochte was 5 years younger and closer to the prime of his swimming career, he underwater-kicked just 23.49 at a Sectionals meet in the 50 free.
Lochte did the kick mostly on his back. He’s said before that he feels like he kicks faster underwater on his back – which was the impetus for the “Lochte rule” that prevents swimmers from kicking on their backs on the freestyle leg of an IM race.
Lochte is entered in 5 races for the Sarasota meet of the US Open: the 200 IM, 200 free, 100 back, 200 back, and 100 free. His coach Gregg Troy is notorious for over-entering swimmers and then scratching their way back to a planned schedule, so we don’t know for sure what races he’ll swim.
Lochte is working on a comeback from a 14-month suspension caused by an anti-doping rules violation. In his first meet back, the US National Championships last summer, he swam a 1:57.88 in a time trial followed by a 1:57.76 in the actual 200 IM event. Those were his best times since the 2016 Olympic Games by over a second and ranked him 12th in the world.
Lochte has 12 Olympic medals, including 6 of which are gold, and is the current World Record holder in the 200 IM.
Update Lochte just posted a vid of him doing 50 underwater with a 50lb weight.
More comments than an ISL match. Go Lochte!
Given how breaststroke dolphin kicks are (not) being policed, Lochte should consider also entering the 50/100 breast 🙂
thought the article said “Gregg Troy is notorious for overtraining his swimmers…”
don’t think that is true, just what my subconscious read
What really happened with Lochte at London 2012. Given prior performances under Troy especially Shanghai 2011 it doesn’t seem likely he would have overtrained.
Did he just break himself in that 4IM or did he party after it as I have heard rumoured?
It’s not like he was bad in 2012 but he lost several close races we might have expected him to get a medal in or win. 2Free, 2Back and 2IM. Plus his relay performances were not as good as I would have expected based on Shanghai a year earlier.
I still rate Lochte as the 2nd best male all-round swimmer of all time. I just feel he had a few too many shenanigans at the wrong time… Read more »
Schooling was 23.36
Lol
Ryan Lochte is a racer and possibly the best short course swimmer ever (although a few of the guys swimming now will likely take that crown). His medal count in short course worlds is close to 40 with a large percentage being gold. He has a huge advantage when he can swim over 1/2 of the race(s) underwater. Phelps never focused on short course worlds so there is no way to compare.
That was for Dressel who just broke his 100 IM record.
I Hope he swims the 200 back this weekend
I hope to see him at one of those Europian drag race meets with polyurethane suits, fins and snorkels (or oxygen tanks?). Maybe that might be his next thing.
drag races? lmao
Idk what to call it
https://youtu.be/GjOvlM1fDlM
https://youtu.be/A9kgQTdX_Ss
Cap and the Google 🙂
This feels like something out of a fever dream
well finswimming like it says in the titel lol
Lol okay
This is that sport for that swimmer withon the team with small feet who is dead last during kicking, then the coach says “Fins On!” And they lap everyone.