Swimming Blogs - Chris DeSantis

Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte will be on the Olympic roster. So will Katie Hoff and Natalie Coughlin. Ask anyone to prognosticate what will unfold at rapidly approaching Olympic trials and they will be sure to agree on at least those four. Then again, Craig Beardsley seemed like a pretty sure thing to make the team when he entered the 1984 trials as the world record holder in the 200 butterfly. He missed the team, finishing 3rd. Pablo Morales, one of the greatest butterflyers ever, tasted the sting of defeat at trials. Chances are there will be some shocking results in Nebraska. Thinking it over, I set out to try and find out just how important seeding ends up being at Trials. For instance, if you were seeded first going into Long Beach in 2004, what was the probability of you making the team? What if you were seeded second? Who was the lowest seed to make the team? With the qualification season for Omaha in the books, lets take a look back at 2004 and see what it tells us we might expect.

The results are fairly shocking. In 6 of 26 events, the number one seed did not make the team. For the purposes of getting this number, I excepted the two events that Natalie Coughlin appeared first on the psyche sheet for but did not actually contest, the 100 fly and 200 back. Number one seeds who were world record holders, however, faired much better. In fact, they all made the team. The number one seeds who did not qualify in that event were Maggie Bowen (200, 400 IM), Mary Descenza (200 Fly), Diana Munz (400 free, although she was seeded number one in the 800 and made it in that event) and Ed Moses (100, 200 breaststroke). Number two seeds faired worse, with 12 of 26 missing the event again accounting for swimmers that did not actually contest the event.

The lowest seed to make the team was none other than Kristen Caverly. Remember her? The swimmer who missed making the team in what she thought was her best chance (IM) and then made it in an off event (200 back). Well, she came into the meet seeded just 17th in the 200 back. Looking at the qualifier lists provided by USA Swimming, it seems unlikely that history will repeat itself. Do swimmers like Will Vietti (17th, 100 breaststroke) and Michelle Mckeehan (17th, 200 IM) have a chance? If Kristen Caverly could do it, so could any event underdog.

Now, I'm not just crunching the numbers for curiousity's sake. I have a more selfish ambition in mind. For months I wrestled with the idea of writing a trials prediction column. On the one hand, I wanted to try my hand at prediction, yet I did not want to slight any swimmers by predicting they would NOT make the team. And so, I will concoct a passionless, ration-free formula to predict the finishes of trials this summer using the data I have collected.

At the same time, I have another personal ambition I need to satisfy. If you've been reading my blogs since the beginning, you know that I am a devoted fan of Mike Gustafson at Swimnetwork, previously Timedfinals. There's a lot of things that make me jealous of Gus, among them his writing ability. I would probably read a Swimmers Ear about his trip to buy cold medicine if he wrote it. I crave to be better than Gus at something. And so, with my trials picks rapidly approaching, and a foolproof formula behind me, I am laying down the gauntlet. Gus, if you're out there reading this, I challenge you to a pick off. Choose the date and time and prepare to go down.