This is Ryan after tonight's 200m back. He looked so tired! Nevertheless he had a fantastic meet. On Friday, Ryan tied for 1st with Matt Grevers in the 100m back. Ryan's time was 54.08. He said it was his best time "in season" by nearly 1 second. I checked and last year in February 2010 at the Missouri GP Ryan's time in the 100m back was 54.81. He didn't swim it last year in Charlotte (in the finals) and at Santa Clara he was 55 seconds. A 54.08 is fantastic. Here's the post-race interview (starts at about 6:18).
Also on Friday Ryan swam in the "B" final of the 50m free. He finished 13th overall with a time of 23.39.
On Saturday, Ryan swam three races back-to-back-to-back. He started off in the 200m IM. He finished second to Michael Phelps. MP's time was 1:56.88, fastest time in the world this year. So fast. Ryan's time was 1:59.19. It's good for him to be under 2 minutes this time of year.
Ryan's next race was the 200m back, which he won by more than 1 second, with a time of 1:57.63.
Ryan's final race tonight was the 100m free. Ryan finished 12th overall (4th in the "B" final) with a time of 50.78. MP won the "A" final with a time of 48.89, another incredible time for him.
Ryan looked so tired after the 200m back that I am surprised he was able to even swim the 100m free. I'm really happy he went through with his triple tonight. As Ryan has said in the past, he needs to practice doing multiple events if he is going to do it at Olympic trials. I'm still holding out for him swimming some combination of the 200m free, 100m back and 100m free at trials, and they are all right on top of each other in the beginning of the week. Of course there is also the 200m back/200m IM double later in the week at trials.
I will post race videos for the 200m IM and 200m back once they are up at usaswimming.org. Here is the video for the 100m back from Friday. Of course it is only a link because Universal Sports STUPIDLY doesn't allow embedding. I say stupidly because they would get a lot more views if they let fan blogs like this one embed their videos.
4 comments:
i disagree. i don't think this was a good meet for ryan. being crushed by phelps again and again is a big disappointment for us fans. ryan has a lot of work to do in order to catch to phelps.
It's March! If there's anything I learned from following swimming the past couple of years, and looking back on how Ryan performed in March previously, he is doing just fine, really good even.
I wouldn't say it if I didn't really believe it. It's precisely because Ryan is working so hard that he didn't beat MP this weekend.
I will come up with some examples. The biggest one I can recall off the top of my head is Missouri GP 2008. Look how slow Ryan swam at that meet compared to MP and then look how fast Ryan swam at trials a few months later.
They train very differently. I don't think this weekend is any cause to be disappointed.
Have to agree with hoipolloi here. Ryan is not really an in-season swimmer because Coach Troy beats him so hard during training. He comes to GPs exhausted, completely thrashed so he's not going to swim top times. He's also unshaved, in a "banana hammock." Don't be disappointed, anonymous. Be excited! Ryan doesn't want to win against a tired, untrained Phelps. He wants to beat him fair and square. Considering where he's at in the season he's actually swimming really well. Coach Troy says it's the best he's been swimming in 4 years according to Ryan.
Thanks swimmom. I think as fans we need to be patient this time of year. Ryan is not going to win every race or have all best times but if he and his coach are happy with his progress, that is a very good sign.
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