2016 U.S. OLYMPIC TEAM TRIALS
- Sunday June 26th-Sunday July 3rd, 2016
- Century Link Center – Omaha, Nebraska
- Friday-Sunday – Prelims – 11:00 am EDT Finals – 7:45 pm EDT
- SwimSwam Preview Links & Schedule
- NBC Televison Coverage Schedule
- Psych Sheets
- Wednesday heats sheets
- Live results
- Day Five Prelims Live Recap
All this week we’ve been comparing what it’s taken to advance out of preliminaries at this year’s Olympic Trials to what it took in 2008 and 2012. Remember, it takes a 16th place finish to move on in events where there are semifinals (200m and down), and an 8th place finish to move on to finals for the longer events.
Here’s the comparison of the 16th place times in events from this morning:
| 2008 | 2012 | 2016 | |
| Women’s 100 Free | 55.43 | 55.38 | 55.38 |
| Men’s 200 Back | 2:01.09 | 2:01.46 | 2:00.31 |
| Women’s 200 Breast | 2:31.34 | 2:30.19 | 2:29.12 |
| Men’s 200 IM | 2:02.60 | 2:03.05 | 2:01.96 |
Today was the first day where there was not a single event where the 16th place time was slower than it was in 2012. There was one event, however, where the 16th place time was exactly the same as in 2012, and that was the women’s 100 free. That’s the second time that’s happened this week, with the first being the women’s 100 fly on Sunday.
The men’s 200 back 16th place time jumped up by over a second, from 2:01.46 to 2:00.31. The former time would’ve placed 26th today.
A 1.07 drop in the 16th place time in the women’s 200 breast means it was the only event from this morning to have seen improvement by that measure from 2008 to 2012 to 2016
Finally, there was over a one second drop in the men’s 200 IM. That’s despite the fact that Conor Dwyer, Chase Kalisz, Will Licon, and Josh Prenot, all men who we had predicted to finish in the top 8, chose to scratch that event today. Had they all competed this morning, that likely would’ve driven the qualifying time down to the 2:01.5 range.