Sweden’s Coleman Will Most Likely Stay In Australia Until Rio

Late last month while competing at the Miami Super Challenge in Australia, Sweden’s Michelle Coleman rocked the world’s 3rd-fastest 200m freestyle.

Coleman won the race in a time of 1:56.07, causing a shake-up in this season’s world rankings by sliding into the #3 spot, sitting only behind American Katie Ledecky and Hungarian Katinka Hosszu. With her mark at Miami, Coleman knocked almost a second off of her previous best time of 1:56.90 logged back in Barcelona in 2013. For additional perspective, Coleman’s mark of 1:56.07 would have garnered her a 4th-place finish at the 2015 World Championships.

To what does the 22-year-old attribute her breakout performance just months outside of the Rio Olympics? Coleman views her training time spent in Australia as the keys to her recent success. “The training has even worked better than expected,” she reveals.

Coleman has spent part of each of the last 5 years training in Australia, as a means to “add variety in training.” She is in the midst of her longest training stint, however, having spent the last 5 months under the tutelage of Coach Denis Cotterell at the Miami Swimming Club, the same club which Aussie distance legend, Grant Hack, calls home.

Coleman explained that her original plan was to come back to her home in Sweden in April, but has now reconsidered those plans. Although she indicates “nothing is decided”, Coleman is certainly liking what she is seeing out of herself on the Gold Coast.

“During training sessions I have even been surprised by my results,” she says. Specific to her stellar, personal-best-setting performance, Coleman says that heading into that race, “I felt pretty sure that my physical shape was good….I had swum 400 in the morning and the best thing about it was the 200 suddenly felt like nothing” she says.

Coleman candidly remarked, “I was really surprised at the time. It was better than I had dared hope for.”

The freestyle and backstroke specialist was among the 5 swimmers already selected in Sweden’s initial roster for the 2016 Olympic Games, which was announced last November. She was listed as being a ‘relay’ participant, but which stroke is not yet specified.

At last summer’s World Championships, Coleman’s swiftest 200m freestyle mark came in the form of her 1:57.36 split on her squad’s 4th-place 800m freestyle relay. She was also a member of her nation’s silver medal-winning 400m medley relay at last year’s World Championships, swimming the backstroke leg, so either or both spots are possible this summer.

If Coleman is able to repeat her Miami Super Challenge 200 freestyle performance, however, Sweden may very well enter the conversation as a minor medal contender in the women’s 800m freestyle relay in Rio.