A Year After Breakout Summer, Michael Chadwick All-In for Olympic Trials

Photo Courtesy: Brooke Wright

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By David Rieder

It had already been a whirlwind summer of 2015 for Michael Chadwick. He had been training in Charlotte with SwimMAC Carolina’s Team Elite, keeping up with Olympians and his lifelong role models in practice. He had made his international racing debut on the Mare Nostrum tour, where he first broke 50 seconds in the 100 free.

How was a routine Sectionals meet in Athens, Ga., going to top all that?

Inside the Gabrielsen Natatorium on the campus of the University of Georgia, a crowd of hundreds watched Chadwick establish himself as a bona fide elite sprinter. He lowered his lifetime best in the 100 free from 49.98 to 49.24 leading off SwimMAC’s 400 free relay and then two days later, on the meet’s final night after many had gone home, Chadwick uncorked a 48.87.

“I was pretty shocked,” Chadwick said. “I didn’t really feel that good [in prelims], and I really wasn’t that confident going into the night. And I was also really nervous before it. With all those things combined I didn’t really know what to expect, but I think after I felt the race out, I realized it was going to be something special.”

But Chadwick still wasn’t prepared to see the digits on the board when he turned around.

“Honestly I don’t even exactly know how to put it into words,” Chadwick said. “It was just kinda like, wow, that’s cool.”

It had been a quick rise for Chadwick‒just two years earlier he had been “the slow guy” on several of SwimMAC’s National Age Group record-setting relays, and he was not heavily recruited before he settled on the University of Missouri.

When he returned home for the summer after his sophomore year to swim with Team Elite, he made a quick impression on coach David Marsh.

“He arrived last year and really moved into a competitive situation with Cullen [Jones] and Ryan [Lochte] and those guys, at least in our quality sets, fairly quickly,” Marsh said. “I think having guys ahead of him always reminded him he had to push a little more, figure out ways to get faster.”

Marsh recounted one particularly impressive set in late June that really opened his eyes to Chadwick’s potential.

“We were doing some descending 100s from a dive to all out. He had no idea he did this‒and I’m not sure to this day he does‒he went under 50 seconds in a racing suit at the end of a practice,” Marsh said. “I think I told him [he went] 51.3, and he believed it.”

Marsh did not want Chadwick to get complacent, but he could tell Chadwick was on track for a breakout‒and it came at Sectionals.

A few weeks later Chadwick headed to U.S. Nationals in San Antonio as, suddenly, a favorite. It was not his first time swimming in the meet, but the previous year in Irvine he had finished outside the top-50 in all three events he swam.

Chadwick qualified for his first National final in the 50 free and ended up finishing fourth in 22.03. A day later in the 100 free, Chadwick was seeded second for the final but ended up finishing a disappointing fifth in 49.41. Looking back on that race, Chadwick thinks he got caught up in the moment and let his nerves get the best of him.

“I think I almost have to be a little bit calmer than other people,” Chadwick said. “When I try to swim for a certain time it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to. Kind of like at Sectionals, there wasn’t really any pressure‒it wasn’t anything but go out there and see what I can do. So when I swim like that, that’s when I’m swimming my best.”

But even after that setback, Chadwick still felt had grown immensely as a swimmer during that summer and not just in his time drops. He could better understand what he needed to be doing in training, how his stroke should feel and how he needed to handle himself outside of the pool‒including diet and rest‒in order to maximize his training.

“I’m just a much more mature swimmer. My whole life I was training to try to catch someone,” Chadwick said. “Now I’m at that level, and I still need to train to get to the next level, but now I just need to do what I can every single day to improve.”

After his successful stint at SwimMAC, Chadwick returned to Missouri for his junior campaign with new goals and his sights set squarely on Olympic Trials. When he got back on campus, Chadwick sought out the Mizzou coaching staff and scheduled a meeting to map out his season.

“We started talking about Olympic Trials all the way back in August,” said Missouri sprint coach Andrew Grevers. “Chaddy wanted to sit down with us with this plan for how to train hard, still perform well at SECs and NCAAs‒he wanted to do well at these meets‒but the focus has been Olympic Trials, all the way back then.”

All of Chadwick’s hard work began to pay off when he earned a spot on the Duel in the Pool team in December in Indianapolis. He represented the United States in international competition for the first time and earned the right to call his sports heroes teammates.

“You watch these guys your whole life, you admire them, you look up to them and you finally get to be on a relay with them,” Chadwick said. “The 400 free relay was one of the greatest memories I’ll ever have, stepping up onto the blocks with Nathan [Adrian], Josh [Schneider] and Matt [Grevers]. And then also getting the American record.”

A few months later at the NCAA Championships, Chadwick finished fourth in the 50 free in 19.04 and sixth in the 100 free in 41.98. He swam on all five Missouri relays as the Tigers finished in eighth place, their highest finish in program history.

But as pleased as Chadwick and his teammates were with their performances, they still had their sights set on bigger goals.

“Honestly, NCAAs wasn’t our biggest focus‒we knew that going in. We worked on long course this year,” Chadwick said. “NCAAs was a practice meet for Olympic Trials.”

Chadwick believes that the racing experience he gained at NCAAs‒he had 13 races over the span of four days‒will be serve him well when he has a potential seven races‒three rounds each of the 50 and 100 free plus a warm-up swim in the 100 back‒spread out over a week at Olympic Trials.

As Chadwick prepares for Trials, he will do so with Andrew Grevers and the rest of the Mizzou coaching staff instead of returning home to Charlotte to train with Marsh and Team Elite.

“We just decided that it was going to be the best thing for me to keep with the training and consistency that I had instead of trying to mix it up six weeks before Trials,” Chadwick said. “We have a plan with how they’ve been training me. To hand me over to another program is a lot of times dangerous, and it made me a little nervous as well.”

Back in heavy training after NCAAs, Chadwick has twice broken 50 seconds in the 100 free this season, at Arena Pro Swim meets in Mesa and Charlotte. Chadwick won’t reveal his goal time for Trials, but he knows that the 100 free final will be a tough field to break into the top two or even the top six.

The American men missed the final of the 400 free relay at the World Championships last year, but the field at Trials will feature reigning Olympic gold medalist Adrian, NCAA champion Caeleb Dressel and a field of veterans that includes nine previous Olympic medalists.

Even though Chadwick will be one of the youngest in the field, his coaches are confident in his chances.

“Because of his background and where he’s coming from I’d expect that he’ll make another nice improvement,” Marsh said. “Fortunately, improving 48.8 into anything 48-low will put you in the game. I’m expecting that he’ll be in the game in the 100 free.”

“Michael Chadwick is the kind of swimmer where, if he’s in a race, if he’s near a human being with 15 meters to go, he is coming after them,” Grevers said. “He finishes a race better than anyone I’ve seen at that age. If he can put himself in that race, in that situation, where he’s with the big boys coming home, then he came accomplish anything.”

And at a meet as unforgiving as Olympic Trials, Chadwick knows there will be no margin for error‒he has to be on his game both physically and mentally.

“I think I have just as good of a chance of anyone,” Chadwick said, “but I know that I have to be best swimmer I can be on that day, and that’s what really matters.”

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