Swimming World presents the video series called the Ross Report. It will be a weekly series where our head video producer Andy Ross will travel around the country to tell the stories of the swimmers and divers you don’t know much about.
This week’s Ross Report focuses on America’s best distance swimmer Zane Grothe. He currently trains in Bloomington, Indiana, with Indiana University’s undergrad team. He is 26-years-old and is coming off the best year of his career.
But Grothe’s path to what led him to Bloomington is interesting. He swam undergrad at Auburn University from 2010-2014. He left Auburn and went to Tallahassee, Florida, but did not see any positive gains in his swimming. He contemplated quitting after the 2015 American Short Course Championships, but he wanted to give it one more shot. But he needed to find a new fit for himself.
Grothe felt he needed a high volume program, so he called up a longtime friend from the Las Vegas area, Cody Miller, and asked if he could make the training move to Bloomington in 2015.
Since then, Grothe has made the 2017 World Championships team, and won three medals at the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships, and has broken two American Records in short course yards. Grothe is now one of the best distance swimmers in the nation, and is gearing up to take down more records at this week’s Short Course World Championships in China.
Grothe said he had big goals for last year’s Winter Nationals and he broke two American Records in the 500 and 1650. This past summer, he said he had big goals for the 1500 and he ended up dropping 12 seconds off his personal best time.
Grothe said he has big goals for this week’s Short Course Worlds, and at this rate, you know he will be taken seriously.
Try to do one with Andrew Wilson. Would be interesting to hear from a guy that’s in the breast stroke events which seem up for grabs for Tokyo.
He is on my list!