Italian swimmer Thomas Ceccon spoke with SwimSwam about his journey at the 2022 World Champions in Budapest where he took 2 golds (100 back and 400 medley relay), set a World Record in the 100 backstroke, and recorded two 4th places (50 back and 50 fly).
Ceccon first addressed the most important topic: “the mustache was only for show, just a bit of drama, but I think I look better without it.”
During the interview, Ceccon says that his World Record was driven by his 4th place finish at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. After that race he came back home with some extra motivation.
Revealing some details about theWorld Championships, Ceccon confesses that 2 weeks before Budapest he raced at Mare Nostrum and due to a late bus he couldn’t do a proper warm-up and only did some dryland exercises. That race went really well and he decided to do the same for the whole week at the World Championships – with equal success.
Thomas also says that he is very much a fan of swimming. He spent a lot of time watching the 2000 and 2004 Olympics trying to understand some details from legendary swimmers.
Speaking about the World Record, he says that he was looking for that time, but not yet. He planned to do it in 2024, so this was what surprised him. About the USA and Russian swimmers, Ceccon says he is happy to be one of the greatest names in backstroke history among Murphy and Aaron Peirsol.
He says that he is looking forward to racing against Russians Kliment Kolesnikov and Evgeny Rylov, who won silver and gold, respectively, at the Olympic Games last summer. The pair are currently banned from international swimming because of their country’s invasion of Ukraine.
Thomas Ceccon is also the first swimmer ever to receive an NFT as a prize. The NFT was a digital artwork created by local Budapest-based artist Krizbo, and minted by FINA. Ceccon says that he loves this idea, and also how the artwork looks. He is also interested in cryptocurrency and is humbled to be the first among this new program.
The only way to properly change minds is statistical significance. Take 1000 swimmers, 500 have a specified in water warmup, other 500 have a specified some other type of warm up. This is how science works. Bu maybe not. As we’ve learned the past few years, most believe their gut only. actual properly conducted science is rarely believed. So never mind I guess.
Ross Wales did dry land warmups years ago. Swam forPrinceton,NCAA Champion if I recall correctly
I wonder how much faster he would have been without the mustache. How much faster would be be if he swam a prescribed wRmup.
He would be slower
Personally, I only swam 100s and down… but I found out early in my college career that I did better with no warmup at all. Long cool downs but zero warmup. Just my personal experience. Not for everyone for sure.
If dryland-exclusive works for warm up,then it should work for cool/warmdown as well.
ive heard of a few sprinters that just go lift weights for 10 minutes or so before a race and don’t bother with anything in the pool. I think it can work for a 100 and down but would be a nightmare for 200 or above. Piano would come quickly.
I did the dryland warmup once years ago, though not intentionally.
It was a random masters meet and I ran into bad traffic on the way, and as a result, got to the pool about 10 minutes before my first race. About 8 minutes of dynamic stretching and light pylometric exercises later I ended up swimming what was at the time a new masters PR in the 50 back.
Never tried it again, but my single anecdotal data point shows it can work! 😀
The problem with swim coaching is there is way to much risk to think outside the box. If a team skips warm up before a meet and someone gets injured, the coach is the fall guy
This sport needs to evolve. Great to see Ceccon mixing it up like this. Wish he went into granular detail on his dryland warmup
Madison Kennedy did this a few years ago and won a 50 free at a fairly competitive meet