Morning Splash: Ryan Lochte Geared Up for Return to the 400 IM

Photo Courtesy: R-Sport / MIA Rossiya Segodnya

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By David Rieder

Today, the racing begins. After two days in Omaha it already feels like it’s been a long meet, but aside from warmups and press conferences, we haven’t even gotten things going yet.

At 10 a.m. this morning, into the water goes the first heat of the men’s 400 IM—or what I call the Bobby Bollier heat, named for the former Stanford standout that won the first-ever preliminary race contested in the Omaha pool eight years ago.

At 7 p.m., the lights will go down, and the sellout crowd will roar as the finalists in the men’s 400 IM walk out. Of course, that’s the same race that opened those first Trials in 2008, when Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte both broke the world record.

Lochte, now the defending Olympic gold medalist in the 400 IM, made news Friday when he ended months of speculation and confirmed that he will indeed be swimming the event at Trials. But he’s swum it so sparingly since 2012, so exactly how fast he can go remains a mystery.

Lochte’s best this year is a 4:12.66, ranking second among Americans behind Chase Kalisz’s 4:11.51. Kalisz has won medals in the event at the past two World Championships, and then there’s veteran Tyler Clary, World University Games gold medalist Jay Litherland and NCAA champion Josh Prenot also in the field.

This race won’t be like 2012, when Lochte had such a comfortable lead in the 400 IM final that he glided into the wall the last ten meters—he will have to work for this one.

Phelps admitted that he has spoken with Lochte throughout the year about the potential of returning to the event. Phelps swam the event in London four years ago despite hardly contesting it in four years—and he struggled badly in the final, ending up off the podium.

“I just said to him, ‘If you’re going to swim it you better train,’ because you can’t do it without [training], trust me!” Phelps said Saturday.

The now-31-year-old Lochte admitted that the 400 IM is the toughest event to recover from, and in response, he was asked why he continues to swim it instead of resting up for shorter distances.

“I could, but then it wouldn’t be fun!” Lochte said, prompting laughter throughout the room. “For me fun is a challenge. I love having a challenge.

David Marsh, Lochte’s coach at SwimMAC Carolina, offered another explanation for why Lochte has drifted back to the 400 IM—and not focused on shorter events as many speculated he might after 2012.

“He’s one of the guys in the United States that has four great strokes,” Marsh said. “When he swims at speeds in the 400 IM, his strokes come easy—they’re on point. When he tries to go down to 100, he has to force things a little bit more.

“He’s very natural at swimming at the speeds of 400 IM, and the challenge was to really get him into the fitness level that he needed to be in to really do the event.”

Is he at the level he needs to be to excel in the 400 IM? Well, we’ll find out soon enough. If he’s not, someone is going to make him pay—just like Thiago Pereira and Kosuke Hagino made Phelps pay four years ago when they knocked him off the podium in London.

*On the women’s side, there’s some consensus about the two favorites in the 400 IM: Olympic silver medalist Elizabeth Beisel and World Championships silver medalist Maya DiRado. 2012 Olympic finalist Caitlin Leverenz looms as the biggest threat to the top two, especially after Katie Ledecky scratched.

But the battle for spots in the back-end of the final should be the intriguing story of the morning. Five women enter with seed times under 4:40 in the event, and 13 women have been faster than the 4:43.17 that was required to get into the final four years ago. And many of those on the cusp of making that final are pretty nervous about just how quick the cutoff might be this time around.

Over the past few days I’ve spoken to two women seeded in the top-ten and to the parent of another swimmer seeded in the top-16. Each expected that it would require a time right around the 4:40-barrier—or possibly lower—to get into the final.

It goes without saying that each breathed a sigh of relief when the news broke that Ledecky and Becca Mann were both out of the event—and the path to the final would be that much easier.

*Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines will be once again be NBC’s broadcast crew for both Trials and the Olympics—their sixth-straight Games together in the booth. Hicks does not announce too many swim meets, returning only once or twice per year for the biggest events, but he relishes the opportunity to be America’s voice for the sport.

“It will be an obligation for me to tell the stories of the new comers coming up, reiterate the stars that you guys already know about and that the public, kind of, only gets reintroduced to every four years, so it’s important to not assume that everybody knows who Tyler Clary is or Conor Dwyer is,” Hicks said.

Making her Olympic swimming debut this year will be reporter Michele Tafoya. Last summer’s World Championships in Kazan was her first introduction to the sport.

Tafoya, who regularly reports on the NFL for NBC’s Sunday Night Football package, came away impressed with the accessibility of the swimmers and coaches she worked with, and she gained an appreciation for swimmers’ toughness.

She recalled an interview with Missy Franklin after one particular World Championships race.

“She had just got out of the pool, and she’s going, ‘Ow, ow, ow!’ and I said, ‘Are you okay?’ And she said, ‘My whole body hurts so bad right now!’ And I had taken that for granted, what they put their entire body through from a musculoskeletal perspective to compete at that level. I was suddenly like, ‘Wow, she is in pain!’

“They’re in pain when they’re done, and that hadn’t occurred to me before, and I think that’s something that people should—hopefully we will get people to appreciate more.”

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