Korean swimming superstar Park Tae-Hwan has parted ways with his Australian coach Michael Bohl, with whom he has worked since 2010, and will try out American-based program SwimMAC Carolina, according to South Korea’s The Chosunilbo.
The paper reports that Park will give SwimMAC a test run, and if all goes well hopes to continue that training on a long-term basis.
Park, who is only 25-years old despite having been competing at major international meets for almost a decade, is the owner of four Olympic medals. In 2008, he won the 400 free and took silver in the 200; in 2012, he placed 2nd in both of those races.
He’s also a two-time World Champion in the 400 free, winning in 2007 and 2011.
In 2014, Park didn’t have a great finish to his long course season. At the Asian Games in his home country (and in fact raced in a pool in Incheon named after him), winning just a silver and two bronzes individually in the 100, 200, and 400 freestyles, respectively. He won all three of those events at the Asian Games in 2010.
Though he stumbled there, he did win his only race at the Pan Pac Championships: the 400 free. He swam a 3:43.15 that was five seconds faster than he swam at the Asian Games.
Among others at SwimMAC, he would train with Tyler Clary and Ryan Lochte: two of the world’s best IM’ers. In 2013, Park dabbled heavily in the IM’s, even racing them at Nationals with the intent of qualifying to swim them at the Asian Games.
Looking forward to the Future!!park,go!
Thanks Sven-now I get what you are talking about. My child swims there (not at the elite level) so you had me worried. Ive watched that group practice a little bit and you can tell when its a race set but hard for me to judge when its a regular set.
Sven: “but these guys can only get faster as quickly as they can recover.”
That is a very profound and wise observation. It rewards re-reading and is worthy of deep study.
And, if Brian Goodell says that an animal lane is a good thing, then thats good enough for me 🙂
Animal lanes have always been a good thing. None of that namby-pamby careful stuff, save your self for tomorrow, don’t over-do it. Love it.
Can anyone explain the negative comments as to why it’s bad for the elite swimmers at nbac to race each other every day at practice-i dont understand-i would think thats a good thing and how would that not happen at swimmac or another elite program?
It’s not that racing each other is bad, but these guys can only get faster as quickly as they can recover, and I think that group raced each others’ speed away last summer. Yes, Bowman likes them to be worn down and he’s gotten results in the past, but I suspect that part of the problem with NBAC last summer was that they were worn down more than he planned because they raced even when he didn’t want them to, like on a recovery day. Not a word of that came from his mouth, but that’s what I suspect the problem would be with a squad like he had assembled.
It’s counter-intuitive, because we naturally think that racing in training… Read more »
Park is one of my favorites to watch, just a beautiful stroke and a great technician. I dig the Ricky Bobby style Animal Lane, but hope also this is not a NBAC part two disaster where these guys leave it in the training pool.
Curious choice. Marsh’s style is perfect for swimmers doing 100 and 200s, but now with Clary he’s got two swimmers targeting 400s. It will be fascinating to see how they do.
It would be cool to see Park swim a SCY meet or two. 😀
Not related to Park, but I don’t think anyone knows that Conor Dwyer has been and still is training with Trojan Swim Club. He is training there full time and no longer with NBAC but still represents them at meets (Grand Prix,etc). Just wanted to put that out there since there is news about Park changing teams but I still haven’t seen an article about Dwyer.
I have not seen an official announcement about Dwyer but I realized that he was no longer in Baltimore some weeks ago. Has anyone given a reason why he is no longer training with NBAC? How many teams has he trained with since 2012?
I think he left when Phelps was arrested and suspended. At least, it was the same time. He strikes me as someone not too loyal when things turn out not as impressive as they was before. He left Troy when one part of his great squad retired and another part (Lochte) was busy with other things and rarely appeared to practice. Now, with Agnel and Mclean left, Alisson Schmitt having kind of break and Phelps suspended he was quick to switch the programm
You took the words right out of my mouth!
Not the cat out of the bag for a while. It’s been discussed some time ago as in late November swim sources posted his own words that he’s temporarily training with Trojans for Doha. Considering the fact he keeps training with them I’d say the official announcement is soon to come. He switched UF to NBAC pretty much the same way when was training with them for months with no announcement.
This is great news for SwimMAC. It goes without saying that Park is an unbelievable talent. It’s got to be a daunting challenge for Marsh to prep a swimmer who has already scaled the highest mountains of the sport and is looking to compete against a generational, Thorpish talent in Sun Yang.