Georgia went 1-2 in the men’s 400 IM, with the familiar duo of Chase Kalisz and Jay Litherland grabbing the gold and silver respectively. Kalisz used his usual strong breaststroke leg to move up to first in the field by the 250 and never looked back, cruising into the wall in 4:08.25. That takes about 7-tenths off of his top ranked time in the world from earlier this year.
Litherland, for his part, knocked about three seconds off of his season best to finish in 4:10.21. That is less than a second off of his best time from last summer and faster than his second place swim that qualified him for the 2016 Rio Olympics.
The rest of the field was unusually tight, with Cal’s Sean Grieshop (4:12.72) and Texas’ Sam Stewart (4:13.65) both recording new best times ahead of Stanford’s Abraham DeVine (4:13.77) and Michigan’s Charlie Swanson (4:14.01). DeVine took the race out hard, leading through the 200 mark before dropping back to sixth after the breaststroke. Rounding out the final was another Georgia swimmer, Gunnar Bentz (4:15.48), and Kieran Smith (4:18.18).
Congratulations