As someone who is engulfed in swimming 365 days a year, and we know many of our readers are as well, the question “how was the swim meet?”, while so simple on its surface, can be a challenge. We know our spouses, our families, and our friends are asking to be polite, to show interest in what we love, and to make conversation, but it’s easily to be paralyzed by how to explain this deep complex story of swimming into an answer that they’ll understand and care about.
So throughout this meet, we’ll take a shot at distilling the answer to that question into a couple of bite-sized pieces to get the conversation started. This is a perfect share on Facebook for your aunties to read or to email back to your cousin on a Sunday morning.
Hopefully these launch into more specific follow-up questions and discussions where you can really flex your muscles.
How Was the Meet? – Second Finals Session at #Tokyo2020
- Adam Peaty became the first British swimmer to ever repeat for Olympic gold, which seems surprising given how good they were in the early years of Olympic swimming. He won the 100 breast, an event that he’s dominated for years. Michael Andrew, the great American hope in this race, was 4th – he was slower than he was at Trials. But everyone was off time, which has become a theme of the meet. No male swimmer in the world is more dominant in an event right now than Peaty in this.
- The US crushed the 400 free relay. Third-best time ever, best time ever outside of the super rubber shiny suits that made everyone really fast. They really rose to the top and seized the moment as many of the top contenders wilted.
- Santo Condorelli, who swam on Italy’s prelims relay, finally got his Olympic medal. He has represented the US, Canada, and now Italy internationally, and was a very late add to the Italian team, but he got his medal.
- Ariarne Titmus dethroned the queen and became the first swimmer to give Katie Ledecky an individual loss at the Olympics. Yeah, Ledecky is still going to win at least two gold medals – nobody is closer to her in the 800 or 1500 – but it was fun to see her locked in a true battle. She was up on Titmus pretty good in the first-half, but Titmus did the same as she did at Worlds in 2019 and back-halfed to gold. At Worlds in 2019, Ledecky was sick so it wasn’t really a fair fight, but this time Titmus earned it. Almost broke the World Record.
- Her coach Dean Boxall LOST HIS MIND!
when the preworkout kicks in #TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/xkU7zyF0gG
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) July 26, 2021
- Maggie MacNeil, the swimmer who was dominant at the NCAA Championships for Michigan in March, won the 100 fly. She was getting a lot of “ok, short course is not long course” criticism after NCAAs, which was weird because she’s also the long course World Champion, but she proved it here.
- The Olympic Record in the women’s 100 backstroke was broken 4 times in 4 different heats on Monday morning. Regan Smith has it entering the final in 57.86, but that doesn’t feel like it’s going to survive the medal round.
- One of the weirdest Olympic moments we’ve ever seen came in the 100 back semi-finals where France’s Yohann Ndouye Brouard crashed into the wall without even attempting a flipturn. It’s almost like he didn’t see the flags. He was disqualified for pushing off on his stomach, though after that disaster he wasn’t going to final anyway. But that looked like it hurt.
— Michael (@LazySwimCoach) July 26, 2021
Titmus also “earned” the gold in 2019. I know Ledecky was sick but Titmus beat others as well.
Hey Braden, this is very good, AND also it could still be too deep for some “wader & bather” types, sad to say (“what’s a heat?” for instance).
The way Titmus paced that 400 leads me to believe that she’s gonna be a beast at the 800.