Swimming Update - Short Course Season

The 2009/10 Short Course swimming season is in full swing. Unfortunately, Ryan has not been able to compete having just had knee surgery.

I don't know anything about the surgery or how Ryan injured his knee... According to Ryan's twitter, he injured his knee, had surgery and is out of the water for a few weeks.

http://twitter.com/ryanlochte/status/4348867232

http://twitter.com/ryanlochte/status/5186059487

The good news is Ryan will be participating in the 2009 Duel in Manchester, England on December 18-19. This is a short-course meters event, with the U.S. team facing off against a team from Great Britain, Germany and Italy. The Duel will be recorded and broadcast on NBC on December 27. http://www.duelinthepool.com/ Ryan spoke to the press about this meet after he had his knee surgery, so he must feel confident about his ability to recover by then. I'll do a separate post about the Duel closer to the time. The European team has not yet been announced, but I am very disappointed that Laszlo Cseh is not part of it. The U.S. team is listed here: http://www.universalsports.com/news/article/newsid=335264.html

I'm happy that NBC is televising the Duel, and do not want to complain about a major U.S. network airing a swim meet, but I really prefer the events to be live. Swimming is so much more exciting when it is live (i.e. all of the Olympics and last summer's 4x100 free relay).

I'm not sure if Ryan will be swimming in the 2009 U.S. Short Course Nationals in Federal Way, Washington, which will take place on December 3-5. Hopefully he will be recovered from his surgery by then. Here's some information on the meet.
http://www.usaswimming.org/USASWeb/_Rainbow/Documents/11ed4e45-a0cc-483f-90a2-929f13173cfa/2009%20SC%20Nats%20Meet%20Book.pdf

The FINA World Cup meets are underway (actually they are almost over) and all of Ryan's SCM world records were broken. Ryan previously held SCM WRs in the 100 and 200 IM.

According to http://www.swimnews.com/, Ryan's WR for the 100 IM, 51.15 set at the 2008 SC World Championships, was broken by Sergey Fesikov of Russia in the prelims of the Berlin World Cup last weekend. Fesikov's time was 50.95. In the finals, Fesikov won with a time of 50.96. Ryan's previous WR was also broken in the finals by Gerhard Zandberg of South Africa who came in second with a time of 51.05.

Ryan's WR for the 200 IM, 1:51.56 set at the 2008 SC World Championships, was broken at the Berlin World Cup by Dairan Townsend of South Africa by only .01! I'm particularly bummed about this WR being broken. I liked that Ryan held the WRs in the 200 IM in both SCM and LCM.

I don't know what kind of suits Fesikov, Zandberg and Townsend were wearing in these swims, but I doubt they were Speedo LZRs or textile suits. It's hard to watch a WR go down when a) you aren't there to compete and b) the swimmers who go faster are not wearing the same suit you wore to set the WR. Given Ryan's injury and the fact that he rarely swims SCM, we'll probably have to wait for the 2010 SC World Championships in Dubai to see if Ryan can get these records back.

***A big thanks to callie01 from Reezy Daily who took these pictures of Ryan at the Minnesota Grand Prix in Minneapolis this past weekend. Ryan did not swim in the meet but went to do some PR and to help coach his teammates. callie01 was very kind to let me post the pictures here.***