In the SwimSwam Podcast dive deeper into the sport you love with insider conversations about swimming. Hosted by Coleman Hodges, Garrett McCaffrey, and Gold Medal Mel Stewart, SwimSwam welcomes both the biggest names in swimming that you already know, and rising stars that you need to get to know, as we break down the past, present, and future of aquatic sports.
We sat down with Todd DeSorbo, the head women’s coach for the 2022 World Championships team. DeSorbo takes us through the 3 weeks that began in Croatia with USA’s “training” (taper) camp and ended with USA winning the most medals of any country ever at a single world championships. DeSorbo breaks down specifics on how he keeps his energy up through long 8-day meets, his role as a head coach, and relay selection for Team USA.
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Music: Otis McDonald
www.otismacmusic.com
Opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the interviewed guests do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the hosts, SwimSwam Partners, LLC and/or SwimSwam advertising partners.
So many athletes spoke about how great the team was this year- a true testament to the work Nesty and DeSorbo put in
When is Alex and Kate coming on the show?!!
Leah Hayes to UVA confirmed?
Every interview of Todd makes me like him a little more
The relays have become the highlights of the meet because the races are so competitive that the winner is a toss-up.
There’s the mystery of who gets to swim in the final, who is tired from an earlier race, who is going to surprise with a huge split.
The 4×200 relay has become one of the best and closest races of the meet.
Interesting interview
Coleman I don’t get your initial question about the thought processes going into relays. Of course there are lots of different rationales going into the makeup of the relay but one is not, go 80% so we get an outside lane. Just a weird question.
Why wasn’t Kibler on the 400 free relay prelims or finals? Eddie was on staff so I am sure there was a good reason. He tied for 4th at Trials
Why did Caleb leave? Did Todd or Braden tell you not to ask that question?
Why was Alex Walsh used on the prelim relay for breast and not Annie Lazor?
Not for Todd, but I would like to see… Read more »
regarding kibler, they said at the time that it was because of covid protocols
- Gonna split hairs here – I didn’t ask if they go 80%, I asked if there was strategy involved with lane goals or effort. That can take numerous forms. It’s a long meet, and if a relay is obviously going to make the final as long as 4 members fall in the pool and one of the prelims swimmers has other swims in the meet, I don’t think it would be outrageous for a coach to say “no need to go all out on this one”. We heard lots of whispers after Tokyo that USA men wanted an outside lane for the 400 medley relay, so I was curious if that was true or not.
- Kibler had COVID in
… Read more »Did anyone else besides Kibler have COVID in Croatia?
In regards to Lazor when Desorbo was talking about safe swims in prelims, maybe he didnt wanna risk it with Lazor since she got DQd for swimming “not safe”
I would’ve assumed Lazor would avoid that error again. She did earn her spot on trials. Desorbo said he intended for them to get the outside lanes so I’m guessing that applied to the medley relay
I think that comment by Todd was tongue-in-cheek.
I see, I was just thinking since the men did well on the outside lane last Olympics and 9th place for prelims at this meet was 3 seconds behind anyways, maybe they were intending to grab an outside spot
At what point will they admit T Huske underperforms on relays and needs to either work on her start or get dialed in for relays like she does individual swims?
Name checks out
Some of those days, she had a crazy lineup for finals before relays. She’s one of the best in terms of the relay (fly in medley and free in relay)
Not until she is on a limited event schedule. She more than performed well based on her heavy schedule throughout the week. And while she may not have hit best ‘relay splits ‘, she is/was still much better than the next best option. And she’s only 19….
Two things that haven’t been discussed in the podcast but I’m curious to know:
1) Why Ledecky in 3rd leg instead of anchoring?
2) What was the original line-ups in mixed medley relay, since Todd said the absence of Caeleb changed it?
given that dressel scratched between the mixed medley heats and finals, probably smith-fink-dressel-huske/curzan. especially since putting the no 1 mens backstroker in the heats suggests that there wasn’t supposed to be a man swimming backstroke in the final
Correct, Rowdy mentioned it was Smith-Fink-Dressel-Huske
That’s pretty bold as Smith had 200 fly and 50 back semis on the same day.
Maybe the forced change acutally did them good.
100% did them good….honestly, the race is turning into the mixed 400 free relay…if you have a stud backstroker and honestly we got 2 guys now in breaststroke that can both go low 58’s and maybe pop a 57…..i don’t see how you don’t go with that blindly or not to your competition. Torrie Huske, despite what someone else just mentioned, was on fire at this meet (how can you not be if you break the American record and darn near the world record 100 fly)…and pretty much everyone has a female freestyler, so you’re in it to win it, why not get out into the lead?? The italians were fire but couldn’t keep up their females to ours, so… Read more »
I so badly wanted to know the answer to the first one!
Maybe so ledecky could give sims clean water? Because if it came down to it and the other teams were on their game ledecky would’ve been a good third leg to run down whoever was in front of them and let sims set sail. Normally letting ledecky anchor would be a good idea if you were confident that the first three could do the job, but I think given weinstein’s volatility at that point in time it wasn’t a bad choice. She obviously ended up pulling through very well, but if she hadn’t, putting ledecky on third leg instead of forcing her to run everybody down from way back like she tried to do in Tokyo was a nice decision.
Reading between the lines of Todd’s answer, he mentioned “It’s easy to get lost in the 4×2”–so it made sense that putting the reliable veteran Katie, who’s used to being far away from her competitors, as third, as opposed to Bella, who could have “gotten lost.” As anchor, I think he was hoping Katie would have given Bella a lead so Bella would have known where she was in the race and just been able to focus on racing (though I don’t know if he expected that big of a lead!).
I missed this question as well, my mistake. But I agree with “green”, Katie has the experience and known ability to run people down, hopefully giving Bella clean water. Plus in prelims Bella anchored wonderfully, so I’m guessing they thought she could do so again
Also looking forward to the next 2 years, bella sims is now a reliable swimmer on this relay. Th could use her again as an anchor and this worlds was a good testing meet for that