Former Alabama swimmer Anton McKee appeared on the podcast “Inside With Brett Hawke” recently for an in-depth conversation regarding his swimming career. McKee swam four years at the University of Alabama from 2013 – 2017 and grew up in Iceland, a country not known for its swimming history. At 13:50 in the podcast, McKee told Hawke how he ended up in Tuscaloosa. Hawke used to coach at Auburn University, which is Alabama’s chief rival so McKee and Hawke competed against each other multiple times in the four years McKee was there.
McKee talked about growing up in Iceland and how he chose swimming growing up. He has already qualified for his third Olympics (10:22) for Tokyo by virtue of his appearance in the semi finals at the 2019 World Championships in the 200 breaststroke. McKee was formerly a distance freestyler while growing up in Iceland and he detailed his transition into a breaststroker while at Alabama (16:30). After his freshman year, McKee suffered an injury to his clavicle (23:51) which put his career back a few steps and he detailed the recovery to that injury and Hawke expressed his feelings when he found out of the broken clavicle as Alabama’s rival coach.
He went over what it was like transitioning from a life in Iceland to Alabama (30:50), and how he handled the transition from college life to the real world (39:00). He currently trains under Sergio Lopez at Virginia Tech, who he deemed as the “breaststroke whisperer,” as he pushes for his third Olympic Games in 2021.
Anton McKee will be making his International Swimming League debut with the new Toronto Titans in the league’s second season, and he dished his thoughts on the league (54:00). While at Alabama, he was a four-time All-American in the 200 breaststroke, finishing fourth in 2014, sixth in 2015, fourth in 2016 and second in 2017.
The podcast can be heard below:
Hawke’s podcasts appear regularly and can be found on his YouTube page. He also recently chatted with David Marsh and Ryan Murphy. Those episodes can be found below: