After Facing Adversity, Claire Curzan Coming Full Circle in Return to Form
Claire Curzan’s recent bout of adversity has forced her to grapple with her relationship with the sport in a way she never did during her do-no-wrong teenage years. Disappointment has yielded balance and growth.
In early October, the University of Virginia hosted Florida in a short course meters dual meet in which Gretchen Walsh would break a world record and three additional American records. Before that meet, Cavaliers head coach Todd DeSorbo told Claire Curzan, swimming her first official meet for the team after transferring from Stanford and sitting out the 2023-24 campaign, that she was physically capable of breaking the American record for that format in the 200 meter backstroke.
Physically capable, perhaps, but DeSorbo knew that Curzan’s mindset was still shaky as she built back up from the biggest disappointment of her career, and Curzan concurred.
“It was hard for me to get excited and get motivated and just get back to swimming and racing,” Curzan said.
Curzan had qualified for her first Olympic team at age 16, and in the summer of 2022, she won five medals at the World Championships. But in her attempt to make it back onto the world’s most prestigious swim team in June 2024, she finished out of contention at the U.S. Olympic Trials. After falling to fourth in the 100 butterfly — the event in which she qualified for the team three years earlier — and eighth in the 100 back, Curzan swam in second place for most of the 200 back final, only for Phoebe Bacon to pass her on the final length and claim the No. 2 spot on the U.S. team by 7-hundredths.
In the immediate aftermath, Curzan took solace at having put together a solid swim, with her time of 2:06.34 quicker than her lifetime best at the start of the year, but the disappointment of missing the Olympic team stuck. She temporarily retreated from the sport and returned to Charlottesville, Va., in mid-August “extremely out of shape.” A return to the usual routine of doubles and weights quickly remedied the physical deficit, but the memory of her shortcomings at Olympic Trials lingered.
Claire Curzan — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
Curzan, who had also missed qualifying for the 2023 World Championships, had felt she was on track after appearing at the February 2024 global meet in Doha, Qatar, where her six-medal haul included a sweep of the women’s backstroke events, albeit without most of the world’s best (including Kaylee McKeown and Regan Smith) in attendance. But she could not replicate those times — or in the 100-meter events, come anywhere close to her best—when it mattered most at Olympic Trials.
“I got really jaded with the (idea of) ‘hard work equals progress,’” Curzan said. “I essentially put my life on pause for the entirety of the year, and the result wasn’t exactly what I wanted. I put in all this work and I dedicated all this time, but I didn’t exactly see the results. So what’s to say that it won’t happen again in the future? I know that’s being extremely pessimistic, and I think I got very negative about the hard work in the beginning of the year.”
Typically known for her ever-present smile and positive attitude, Curzan felt miserable at practice, and the negativity spilled out. Curzan recalled a conversation with DeSorbo in which the coach told her, “You had your moment to mope, and now it’s time to pick it up and get over it” — and from that moment, her approach to practice changed. She still needed to work through her Olympic Trials disappointment, but she confined that to sessions with her long-time sports psychologist.
“He was great just to be able to cry with him and be able to be super sad with him,” Curzan said. “And then with Todd, he was kind of the rock that was trying to push me toward being positive and challenging me in ways that I wasn’t going to like, getting me comfortable enough to challenge myself.”
Turning Point in November
During her middle-school and high-school years, Curzan had been a record-shattering protégé, and she still holds a whopping 17 national age group records between short course yards and long course meters, and she remains the overall national high school record holder in the 100 fly and 100 back. She has also held world junior records in long course and a handful of since-broken American marks in short course yards and meters. But her momentum had stalled in the two years since her graduation, with best times becoming far more rare and her record-breaking tendencies gone.
That changed in late November at the Tennessee Invitational, which served as the Cavaliers’ midseason rest meet. For the first time, Curzan helped Virginia post nation-leading times in all four 200- and 400-yard relays, events in which the team has won at each of the last three NCAA Championships. Her freestyle times, achieved between relay leadoffs and a time trial, were more than adequate: Her 46.98 100 was a lifetime best, and her 50- and 200-yard marks were close to years’-old personal marks.
Claire Curzan — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
In back-to-back races, Curzan clocked 49.50 in the 100 fly, a quarter-second off her best time that once stood as the American record, and then 49.37 in the 100 back, a best time. And on the meet’s final day, she swam the 200 back head-to-head against Walsh, with the meet utilizing a “super finals” format that put only the two-quickest swimmers from prelims in the pool to determine the overall winner and runner-up. Curzan had been next to Walsh one day earlier in the 100 fly as Walsh swam the fastest time ever, but this time, she was “terrified” to swim next to her teammate in an event that was now her best.
Curzan’s shift toward the 200 back came after she had already achieved her first doses of international success. In long course, she did not even race the event at U.S. selection meets in 2021 and 2022, but that was the only race in which she came close to qualifying for the Paris Olympic team. In her lone season at Stanford, she won the NCAA title in the yards version of the event. Entering the 2024-25 college season, Curzan ranked fourth all-time in the event at 1:47.43, a quarter-second off the American record of 1:47.16.
In Knoxville, Curzan would claim that record for herself, becoming the first woman ever under 1:47. Walsh jumped out to an early lead in their head-to-head race, but Curzan expected that and did not overexert herself in the opening lengths of the race. She overtook Walsh on the third 50 and then poured it on. “I just trusted my training coming home,” Curzan said.
After swimming off record pace for the entire race, Curzan finished in 1:46.87, the sort of jaw-dropping effort she produced with regularity as a teenager and an emphatic statement of her return to top form.
The emotion that followed for Curzan was “mostly relief,” with built-up anxiety cast away with the performance. “Swimming is an individual sport. The team is so much fun in college and having everyone cheer for you, but at the end of the day, your performances are only attributed to what you do in the pool. I take the hardships very hard. So it’s been a lot of self-beatdown,” Curzan said.
“At some points, you just begin to question, ‘Was that it?’ I think the nature of my kind of career has been a bit special because I was so good so young, and you almost kind of develop imposter syndrome when you get older. You never know if your 15-16-year-old body was what was best for swimming. And then now you’ve developed and changed to something else. But it was great to prove to myself that my training can translate.”
A Positive Direction
Following the Tennessee meet, Curzan will enter 2025 tracking in a positive direction, as one of the key figures on a team heavily favored to win a fifth-consecutive NCAA championship and building toward a return to long course in which she will aim to return to the top-level U.S. team for the first time since 2022.
Not that swimming will ever look the same as it did as a teenager. Now 20, Curzan has encountered physical limitations in training that did not exist before. “I could just keep going forever, and now I get sore,” Curzan said. In response, she has learned to “listen to my body better than I did before,” understanding what sort of fatigue she cannot bounce back from and keep pace with her training regimen.
“I think learning those limits and being able to adjust accordingly, not as necessarily effort but just intention, be able to save yourself a bit more to be good the next day,” Curzan said. “I still mix in plenty of beat-yourself-down-in-the-ground because I think you need to do that, but less of that so you’re less constantly broken down and more of a better average.”
Claire Curzan — Photo Courtesy: Andrea Masini / Deepbluemedia / Insidefoto
Like most veteran swimmers, Curzan regularly feels race anxiety, but she feels reassured now that she and the Virginia coaching staff have figured out what works for her regarding championship-meet preparation, including how much rest she requires to reach her best times. She does not expect to be like Walsh and fellow Virginia sprinter Kate Douglass and be able to achieve best times at any meet, but she and DeSorbo have realized that a shorter taper serves her the best. Putting that plan into action has allowed her to hit her stride in Year 2 with the Cavaliers.
Further, she has thrived in the high-intensity culture of the Virginia swim team, including practicing against the men’s team, swimming creatively-written practices and even meets with odd events such as 75s and 150s. Curzan credits the support of her Virginia teammates as a huge lift, particularly as she processed the disappointment of Olympic Trials.
“This sounds totally cliché, but if it wasn’t for them, I probably would not have done like what I did at midseason, just because they’re all-in with you,” Curzan said. “They understand. They were there with me when I didn’t make the team in June, and just having them around to bring up my positivity when I was being quite negative was very good.”
A New Outlook
As Curzan moves through her career — with this season plus the next two racing for the Cavaliers and then plans to continue swimming through at least 2028 — the event that first made her an Olympian might continue to become less of a focus. She will continue to race the 100 fly, particularly on Virginia’s medley relays this season, as Walsh is a virtual lock for the backstroke legs, but Curzan wants to capitalize on her momentum in backstroke and hopefully freestyle.
Considering her competition in the college ranks and in long course, the 200 back looks like her ticket to further NCAA titles and international appearances. The 1:46 in November has allowed Curzan to consider the possibility of a 1:45 by the end of the season, although she admits that is a “reach” goal.
“I’ve been able to kind of detach a lot of my identity from swimming. Before I used to think about myself as just a swimmer, and school was secondary, which is not great, but I was full into swimming. I was making some money from swimming, like, ‘This is great, this is a job.’ But I feel like now I’ve realized I’m more well-rounded,” Curzan said.
“I realized that swimming is a lot more secondary, and it’s taken a lot of the pressure off, which is nice. It’s something that I do, but it’s not like the entirety of my persona anymore.”
Happy for her.
Her resilience and determination are truly inspiring. It’s incredible to see how she has overcome challenges and is trying to come back strong. Her strength, both in and out of the water, is a testament to her character and perseverance.