Produced by Coleman Hodges.
Reported by Tony Carroll.
Caeleb Dressel is not only emerging as one of the nation’s best up-and-coming sprinters, but he’s climbing his way up the world rankings as well. Dressel won the men’s 50 freestyle tonight with the third fastest time in the world this year behind Florent Manaudou andNathan Adrian. Dressel touched the wall tonight in 21.53, breaking the 17-18 National Age Group Record as well.
Cullen Jones finished second with his time of 21.87, and Josh Schneider finished third at 21.92.
Michael Chadwick just missed hitting 21 seconds with his time of 22.03. William Copeland and Kyle Darmody weren’t far behind him at 22.25 and 22.35, respectively.
Wyatt Ubellacker and Michael Trice topped off the A final with 22.4’s.
Roland Schoeman won the B final at 22.28 and Michael Andrew won the 18&u final with a 22.37, just missing his National age group record by .03.
I love Cullen Jones. I am glad he’s unhappy with his performance but I felt he threw Marsh under the bus a bit. Its on him–he swam like crap. Every great swimmer knows that sometimes you don’t feel like you’re pulsing with electric enthusiasm even if everyone else appears to be. Cullen probably needs to race more/not less probably needs to be more focused outside of taper and rest time. He has the ability to make the O-team again IF one these more focused younger swimmers (Drexel et al. who I wish well) does not snatch the opportunity from him.
Rumor has it Josh’s goggles filled up. Still sub-22. Not bad.
Cullen Jones is definitely in the mix for the 50 next year. He is a big time performer who puts up his best times when it matters most.
Excited to see what he does in the 100 tonight. Even with our up and coming swimmers, the US 4×100 could certainly benefit from Cullen at his peak.
I hope all these guys all light it up next year and that the US has at least 10 swimmers who could pop a 48 100 free and a couple who could pop a 47.
Jones has proven to come up big when it counts, but I do wish that on the off years he wouldn’t be putting up a 50 or 51 in various finals.
The problem is- having 10 guys going 48.7 is useless. We have 1 guy who can be 47… then a couple of older IMers who cannot swim in prelims AND finals due to big schedules.
So that means the 47 potential guy will swim prelims and finals with 3 other dudes… all of who so far are 48.8 or slower flat starts.
If we don’t swim the 47 guy in prelims, it’d possible we don’t make the final. Seriously. I don’t like the idea of 4 dudes who haven’t broken 48.7 swimming prelims of that relay. At all. Could they all go 48 low splits? Sure… but if they go 48.5, 48.3, 48.3, 48.2… that 3:13.5… which may not be… Read more »