Katie Ledecky dominates as Caeleb Dressel founders at U.S. championships
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INDIANAPOLIS — As the current symbols of American dominance in swimming, 26-year-old superstars Caeleb Dressel and Katie Ledecky came into a pivotal week on the competition calendar at very different points on their trajectories. And by the time both completed their initial swims at the U.S. championships — effectively the starting point of the 13-month buildup to the 2024 Paris Olympics — the distance between them was so vast as to be seemingly unbridgeable.
Somewhere between the poles of Dressel’s startling stumble and Ledecky’s powerful opening statement, the squad that will represent Team USA at next month’s world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, began to take shape — with a stark reminder that nothing (well, almost nothing) can be taken for granted.
When evening fell Tuesday at the Indiana University Natatorium and the prime-time broadcast of the Day 1 finals got underway, Dressel — the most dominant American male swimmer since Michael Phelps and a seven-time Olympic gold medalist — was shoehorned into the “C” final of the 100-meter freestyle, an afterthought race at the end of the night’s program that exists to give a taste of prime-time exposure to swimmers who might otherwise never experience it.
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Earlier Tuesday, Dressel had finished 29th in the preliminary heats, failing to make it to the “A” or “B” final of an event for which he is a two-time world champion and the U.S. record holder. His time of 49.42 seconds was nearly two seconds behind top qualifier Ryan Held’s 47.63 and almost 2½ seconds off Dressel’s record (46.96). For him to sneak into the “C” final required more than a half-dozen fellow competitors to scratch.
In that race, he added more time, finishing in 49.64 in front of a crowd that had dwindled to a few hundred. (Jack Alexy won the “A” final in 47.93.) Afterward, Dressel declined requests to speak with the media, as did his coach at Gator Swim Club, Anthony Nesty.
Though Dressel is entered in three more events here — the 100 butterfly, the 50 fly and the 50 free, for which he is the world record holder, American record holder and American record holder, respectively — Team USA must at least consider the possibility that it will send a team to Japan in a few weeks that does not include him.
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Though Dressel’s result may have been shocking to those who only pay attention to the sport in the summer of an Olympic Games, it didn’t shock anybody in the world of elite swimming — a group for whom Dressel has been a fleeting presence and a source of mystery for the past 12 months.
After abruptly withdrawing midway through last summer’s world championships in Budapest — a decision attributed to “medical reasons” — Dressel effectively disappeared from the scene, resurfacing briefly 2½ months later with a social media post that said he had taken a break from the sport. He explained in part: “I know I can have swimming and happiness. I had them both at one point in my life and I’m working on it. If you need a break, take one.”
Dressel returned to training this year but had competed in just one preparatory meet, in Atlanta in mid-May, and came nowhere near his top times. He entered this week’s meet ranked 24th among Americans this year in the 100 free.
“I think we’re all just really glad he’s here and competing,” said Ledecky, his teammate with Nesty’s pro group in Gainesville, Fla. “There’s so much that you all [in the media] don’t see on a day-to-day basis, just of the joy he brings to the pool deck every day and the impact he has on his teammates. … I know he’s got a lot to look forward to, moving forward this week and years to come.”
As for Ledecky’s swim, it was vintage Ledecky. Her time of 8:07.07 in the 800 free was her fastest since her world-record-setting swim at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016 (8:04.79), when she was still a teenager, and is the latest data point that validates her decision in September 2021 to shift her training base from Stanford to Florida and points to a potentially historic showing in Fukuoka this summer and Paris the next.
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“I’ve been feeling good,” she said. “I knew I could be pretty good tonight. ... I’m very pleased with that and pleased with how it felt.”
A seven-time Olympic gold medalist, with two of those golds coming two years ago in Tokyo, she is defying history by getting quicker — her time Tuesday was faster than what she posted at the world championships a year ago (8:08.04), which was faster than her time the summer before in Tokyo (8:12.57) — at an age when female distance swimmers typically are in decline or retired.
She still has never been beaten in her signature race, and she now owns the 30 fastest times in history. Only two of those were faster than Tuesday’s. In Fukuoka, she will seek to become the first swimmer, male or female, to win the same event at six straight world championships.
Ledecky also will be swimming the 200, 400 and 1,500 freestyles later in the meet, although only in the 1,500 is she considered the clear favorite in Fukuoka. The 400 at worlds sets up as an epic three-way duel among Ledecky and rivals Ariarne Titmus of Australia and Summer McIntosh of Canada, both of whom have lowered Ledecky’s world record since last year. As for the 200, Ledecky may be eyeing that as a relay-only event.
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Aside from Ledecky and a few other veterans, Tuesday was a day for new faces, with the list of swimmers clinching spots on the Fukuoka roster including eight who will be making their senior-level international debuts. And that was just Day 1 of a five-day meet.
Underlying Team USA’s preparations for worlds is the question of whether the Americans are strong enough and deep enough to hold off the Australians for another year — a concern rooted in the Tokyo 2020 medal table, where Team USA’s swimmers barely edged the Aussies in gold medals, 11-9. (The margin was 16-3 at the Rio Olympics.) Although Team USA dominated Australia, 18-6, in golds in Budapest last year, a large contingent of the latter’s best swimmers skipped that meet.
Seeing as how Dressel had a hand in five of Team USA’s golds in Tokyo, the task of holding off the Aussies isn’t getting any easier.
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Source: The Washington Post
