Omaha, Neb.
Halfway through this meet, then, a new group of brazen, undeterred swimmers have stared down not only the clock, but the swimmers on the blocks beside them, some of them heroes as they grew up. This is the last Olympics for Michael Phelps, the most decorated and famous athlete the sport has ever produced. As importantly, though, it is the first Olympics for 17 of the 26 athletes who had qualified for Rio headed into Thursday night’s finals.
“It’s kind of a changing of the guard this time around,” said Lilly King, who won the 100-meter breaststroke earlier this week, and could well make the team in the 200 breaststroke as well.
King is just one of the swimmers whose story will be told heading into the Games — 19 years old, twice an NCAA champ in her freshman year at Indiana, the product of an also-ran, out-of-the-way swimming club in Evansville, Ind. It isn’t unusual for such characters to surface at trials.
“That’s going to happen every trials,” 12-time Olympic medalist Natalie Coughlin said. “It happened last time. It happened the time before. That’s just the natural progression.”
But with 30 spots still up for grabs heading into Thursday night’s session, there is the potential for this to be a more significant progression. The last two U.S. swim teams, in 2008 and 2012, included 23 and 25 first-time Olympians, respectively. In six events, the top two swimmers — the ones who earn berths on the team — have both been filled by newcomers: King and Katie Meili in the 100 breaststroke, Olivia Smoliga and Kathleen Baker in the 100 back, Maya DiRado and Melanie Margalis in the 200 individual medley, Ryan Murphy and David Plummer in the men’s 100 back, Kevin Cordes and Cody Miller in the 100 breaststroke, and Chase Kalisz and Jay Litherland in the 400 IM.
“All the guys know that there’s a new era that’s going to be ushered in,” said Dave Marsh, who coaches an elite club team in Charlotte and serves as the women’s head coach for the Olympics. “What you want to do is have it be ushered in at a very high level. … There’s a natural, really, clash of the titans that’s happening here between the older guys and the younger guys.”
In some cases, those swimmers — on both the men’s and women’s side — will be inheriting, or trying to take over, traditions that are very meaningful to the history of American swimming.
Smoliga, for instance, beat a field in the 100 back that included the women who have won the last three Olympic golds — Coughlin (2004 and ’08) and Missy Franklin (’12). In the men’s version of the same race, the U.S. has produced the last four gold medalists.
So there is celebration for each of these new faces as they make the team here. But there will be expectations later this summer, when they arrive in Rio.
“I love it,” Smoliga said. “I’m glad there is pressure on me. I feel as though I perform my best when stakes are high. … I love the pressure, I love the extra stress, and it’s just an honor to walk in their footsteps and to be kind of handed down that responsibility. I’m ready for it.”
If the U.S. is to uphold its normal standard in the pool in Rio, she can’t be alone in that self-assessment. In each of the last six summer Olympics, Americans have won more swimming medals than any other country, dominating every time — 31 medals and 16 golds in London, for instance, with China the next closest with 10 overall medals. Phelps, Franklin, Katie Ledecky and Nathan Adrian will be among the previous gold medalists who will be trying to lead the way again.
But for the numbers to add up — the U.S. has won at least 26 swimming medals in each of those last six Games — some first-timers will have to contribute.
“There have been some times where I was kind of second-guessing to see if we had really exciting kids that were ready to step up and fill our shoes when we leave,” Phelps said. “But I see that more and more in the sport every day. I might not know half of the team, but by the end, I have a feeling I will know the whole team.”
That’s where the fan base sits now, just more than a month from the start of the Olympics.
The stories, over that time, will come — how King grew up in a pool with just four lanes, filled with 35 kids (“Do the math; it’s not a lot of room to swim,” she said); how DiRado made the Olympics for the first time, but will retire from the sport after Rio so she can take a management consulting job; how Litherland is one of three swimming triplets; how Cordes moved to Singapore to train.
The story here, though, is all of them, as a group, pushing out former Olympians and their medals, intending to become an old guard all their own.
“I couldn’t have predicted when it was going to happen,” Adrian said. “I knew it was going to happen, just with the aged being pushed out. That’s the name of the game. Just trying to keep up.”