Watch: Maya DiRado on Making the Olympic Team

2016 U.S. OLYMPIC TRIALS

Women’s 400 IM champion Maya DiRado was the first woman named to the 2016 USA Olympic Swimming Team, and a little while after the race, she sat down with members of the media to answer a few questions.  Several of the questions focused on the difference between her Trials experience in 2012 and her Trials experience this year, and here’s what she had to say, in part:

Yeah, it’s a totally different ball game, with the lead-up, and being on the door out there, like it’s cool, but it’s also kind of scary, but, you know, you just look at it in that I’ve done the work to put me in a spot where people were expecting me to make the team, and that’s good…To go from kind of being in the mix and getting fourth and not really feeling that close to then now winning, it was almost in a way less stressful going into these Trials, because I just felt so much more prepared. Going into 2012 it was like I have no idea how this is going to go, but coming into this one, I knew I did the training, I knew I’d put all the pieces together, and it was just a matter of executing. So there is obviously the added pressure of kind of coming in as a top seed, but in the same way it’s less stressful because I know I’ve done the work.

You can read the full text of the interview here.

 

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