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By David Rieder.
Sydney Pickrem was crushed. Behind the blocks for the women’s 200 IM final on day two of the FINA World Championships, she was a medal contender, arguably a medal favorite, but it all came crashing down. After 50 meters, she was out of the race.
Pickrem had choked on water, and there was nothing more she could do. She pulled herself out of the pool at the end of the fly leg, and the race went on without her. Her semi-final time of 2:09.17 would have placed her in bronze-medal position.
There was absolutely nothing she could have done about it.
In tears, she called Randy Reese, her coach from her high school years in Florida.
“I’m like, ‘I got out. I messed up. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,’” Pickrem recalled. “He’s like, ‘You choked on water. What are you supposed to do? You can’t swim through that. You have to get out. What, do you want to finish 25 meters behind? Your 400 is better anyway.’”
Reese helped calm her down, but it took Pickrem a little bit longer to realize that one race could not be the end of the world.
“Just tried to get to a better place and mindset and see that my year is not gone away with that one swim,” Pickrem said. “It’s one swim, and I’m going to swim a lot more 200 IMs in my life.”
She still had the 400 IM to go at the World Championships, so she refocused on that one, but she had a long wait before she would get to that point: five days off.
Photo Courtesy: Rob Schumacher-USA TODAY Sports
“At the beginning, I was glad I had that kind of break, but by day three, I think I had mentally pictured me next to Hannah (Miley) for days and thinking about what I was going to do in that race,” Pickrem said. “I’ve been thinking about that constantly and probably over-analyzing it more than I should have.”
She spent the majority of the meet bidding her time, and then on day eight, Pickrem raced again. She won her heat and qualified fifth for the 400 IM final. She finds herself in the exact position as before the 200 IM final—as a medal contender.
Outside of gold medal favorite Katinka Hosszu, the other seven qualifiers for the evening final all finished within two seconds of each other in prelims. Pickrem, meanwhile, currently holds the sixth-fastest time in the world at 4:35.43. It will certainly take quicker than that to win a medal, but she did look strong in those early rounds of the 200 IM, so a drop is well within her reach.
Pickrem explained that she had a small panic attack during her butterfly leg in the prelims, but she hopes she got most of the jitters out with that race so that she can attack the evening swim.
“I think the more I’m swimming, the more confident I’m getting,” Pickrem said. “Whatever happens, happens—there’s nothing I can do about it besides try to have my best race.”
And that could put her on the podium. Bethany Galat, Pickrem’s teammate at Texas A&M who won silver in the women’s 200 breast Friday evening, would not be the least bit surprised to see Pickrem returning to College Station this fall with some hardware of her own.
“She’s tough as a nail,” Galat said. “She’s ready to go for the 400 IM. She’s going to kill it.”
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Fancy that
And she certainly did…. props…