This afternoon, while driving home from work, I caught a piece on NPR featuring Dakota Hodgson talking about the upcoming Olympic Trials and his chances in the 200 fly.
Listen to the piece, and read the transcript, here.
Aside from the obvious – that Olympic years are a great time to be a swimfan – this piece, produced for a largely mainstream audience, hit upon a huge idea in swimming headed toward Omaha: the huge shadow that Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps cast on the American team. Between the two, they could claim as many as 10 of the 26 individual swims. That’s a huge chunk, and can be daunting for American swimmers. It would be hard mentally, for example, to even attempt to race the 200 IM – unless a swimmer is young enough to use it for “experience” put toward races after 2012.
Hodgson is a former Auburn Tiger who will begin at USC this fall; he’s currently back home in Nashville training under his father toward Omaha. He was the 5th-fastest 200 butterflier in prelims at a Phelps-less summer Nationals last year in 1:58.81, but slipped to 10th in finals.