Blueseventy Swim of the Week: Adrian Undefeated in PSS 100 Frees

Disclaimer: Blueseventy Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The blueSeventy Swim is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.

At last weekend’s Pro Swim Series meet in Mesa, Nathan Adrian won the 100 free by three tenths over Michael Chadwick.

Ho-hum. Tell us something we didn’t know.

What’s incredible is that Adrian winning a PSS 100 free has almost become a given. In fact, based on our research, Adrian has not lost a 100 free at a Pro Swim Series meet since before the series was even called the Pro Swim Series. And we actually haven’t been able to find a 100 free that Adrian has contested and lost at a Pro Swim Series meet, stretching back at least to 2014.

That’s years of dominance in one of the highest-variance events, an event where only three men have ever repeated as World Champ and where only four have won back-to-back Olympic titles.

Adrian has been winning 100 frees since the Pro Swim Series was called the Grand Prix Series. The tour rebranded in early 2015. Results are only available on USA Swimming back to the 2013-2014 season, but we dug up Meet Mobile results for a handful more meets, all the way back to the Minneapolis Grand Prix in the fall of 2012. In all of those meets, we haven’t found a single instance of Adrian losing a 100 freestyle.

The times have been remarkably consistent and consistently fast. And Adrian hasn’t benefited from weak fields, either. Take a look at some of the notable names who have finished second behind Adrian in a 100 free at some point since 2012:

• Yannick Agnel
• Michael Phelps
• Ryan Lochte
• Roland Schoeman
• Ricky Berens
• Marco Orsi
• Conor Dwyer
• Miguel Ortiz
• Santo Condorelli
• Jeremy Stravius
• Luca Dotto
• Cristian Quintero
• James Magnussen

You can add Caeleb Dressel to that list if you include 2017 Summer Nationals, which was technically the final stop on that year’s Pro Swim Series.

Last week, Adrian was 48.84 to beat Chadwick for the win. Per USA Swimming’s database, Adrian has an incredible 81 career swims under 49 seconds in the event, including 13 under 48 seconds. Looking through his career records looks like someone’s bingo sheet on a blackout round: he’s seemingly hit almost every individual digit between 48.00 and 49.00.

The 29-year-old Adrian has now been a mainstay of the U.S. sprint scene for a full decade, with his first international medal coming in April of 2008 at the Short Course World Championships in Manchester. Adrian won the 100 free at that meet, beating Italy’s Filippo Magnini.

This week’s Swim of the Week is a tribute to Adrian’s remarkable consistency and racing ability that’s kept him undefeated in 100 frees on the Pro Swim Series for the past 6 seasons.

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