Swimming Blogs - Chris DeSantis

So, if you read my blog post a couple of weeks ago, you know that i have challenged swimming television star Mike Gustafson to a high stakes game of picking trials finishes. Soon after we traded boastful blog posts I called Mike to hammer out the details for our pick off. Not content to pick just who would qualify in each event or go one place extra as in Swimnetwork's Fantaswim, Mike and I agreed to go out to an astounding eight places in each event. For all 26 events that will be contested in Omaha, we would each attempt to guess the exact finishing order of the championship final. I relished the chance to pour over the psyche sheets systematically. I figured that there was no way Mike, by now nearly half a year into an erratic cross country journey, could stay current enough in results to have any clue who would finish beyond 4th. I nearly ordered a victory cigar before i realized I never smoke. Then I started to work on my picks.

Almost immediately my honed system for making picks went out the window. I quickly discovered that in almost every race, I liked about five different people to finish in the top two. To further complicate matters, I agonized over leaving anyone seeded in the top eight out of my championship final, even though. After completing just four events I was already regretting my decision to go out to eight. My earlier delusions of grandeur gave way to thoughts of a cackling Chris Michael celebrating my defeat at the hands of Gus.

Eventually I got myself refocused on the task at hand. After staring at the psych sheet until my vision began to blur, I realized that several things about the list of seeds surprised me in a number of ways.

For starters, many events feature insane depth that give way to steep dropoffs within the top eight seeds. For instance, Eric Shanteau is seeded 6th with a world class 400 IM time of 4:14.33. You can honestly say that anyone of the top six would be a threat to medal in Beijing. Just two spots below Shanteau, the seed times drop steeply to 4:19, a time that will be unlikely to advance beyond the preliminary round in the Olympics. There is a similar pattern in the men's 400 freestyle where the first through fourth seeds all have swum 3:44. The next seed if you except Michael Phelps who will likely not contest the event is then a 3:48

The second thing I noticed was the sheer amount of qualfiers in many events. This is an issue that has really torn me up over the past few weeks, since I read that USA Swimming intended for 800 swimmers to make the meet and ended up with over 1200. On one hand, it seems ridiculous that some events have over one hundred swimmers when the lowest seeded swimmer to qualify for Athens was 17th. The purpose of the meet, after all, is purely to select the athletes who will go to the Olympics. You could then argue that any more than thirty swimmers per event is superfluous. On the other hand, I weigh the value of the experience for over a thousand swimmers who will compete in Omaha and not make the team. For many college age swimmers who don't make the team, this may be a once in a lifetime experience. For younger swimmers, there is a chance to get their feet wet on the big stage before returning in 2012 and claiming their own spots. I concluded in fact that there is a value to many of the additional qualified swimmers, whatever place they are in their career.

After all, trials will be a lasting memory for me as well. For so many years, I have followed the sport from a distance. I only know athletes like Hoff, Phelps and Lochte as times on a page and images on a screen. National level swim meets have taken place in a java live timing window as I, for the most part, imagined what the races looked like. I've been trying to prepare myself for the moment in Omaha when it all becomes real. The best athletes in our sport will not only be right before me in flesh and blood, but their performances will also be more vivid than they have ever been. A little piece of me in petrified of how this meet will take a sledgehammer to the way I've followed swimming. The rest can't wait to take that leap.