The road to London in the breaststroke events goes through Los Angeles. That’s because coach Dave Salo has assembled the greatest breaststroke training group in the world at his Trojan Swim Club, which was made even stronger today by the announcement that short course phenom Mike Alexandrov would be joining the group.
For those keeping track, the group now includes Eric Shanteau, Kosuke Kitajima, Mike Alexandrov, Ed Moses, Kasey Carlson, Rebecca Soni, and Jessica Hardy. What was originally announced to be just a few-week training hiatus has apparently turned into a permanent move for Alexandrov. After seeing recent comments on his Twitter (including saying that two sprint sessions with Salo made him feel “alive” and referring to Los Angeles as “paradise”). The move isn’t too far from his former training spot with Tucson Ford Aquatics.
Alexandrov has long been a short-course specialist, and last December at Short Course Nationals he set both the 100 and 200 yard American Records. After tasting gold on the American medley at the 2010 World Championships, he’s now looking to improve his abilities in long course and earn an Olympic spot out of a depleted American breaststroke group. He has been a feel-good story for USA Swimming after switching his competition-nationality from Bulgaria to USA after the 2008 Olympics (he holds dual-citizenship). In college, he swam at Northwestern as part of a flash-in-the-pan team that included Matt Grevers, who Alexandrov has trained with for the better part of a decade until now.
I will be curious to see how far these moves will end up going. Could some of the Auburn breaststrokers (Adam Klein, Mark Gangloff, Micah Lawrence) be next? I’d bet that at least one of them makes the move between now and the Olympics.
Did you have inside info on Auburn? Not sure if she’s headed to USC, but rumor is Micah Lawrence has already announced she is not swimming at Auburn next year.
Makes you wonder what Salo’s priority is, the NCAA team or his pro group. Looking at previous years I’d of said the latter, but given this years performance by both the men and women at NCAAs, everything seems good. Coach Salo seems to be doing the work of 10 men. Props to him and the rest of his staff, but still I wonder if something is being sacrificed along the way.
It will be interesting to see if other Tucson Ford swimmers jump ship now that Frank Busch is gone…..
Efimova is only 19 years old, could she be considering a move to USC?
At what stage does having so many star swimmers become too many star swimmers? You’ve got so many different national champs to taper for, so many elite athletes to give necessary levels of attention to. Quite the juggling act.
This is a good point, especially if they start to get more internationally diverse. Right now, they’re still largely American.
At the same time, if you’re managing a professional training group, where it’s your job to coach them, and it’s their job to swim for you, it’s probably pretty doable. I mean, it’s not like he’s got a group of 160 age groupers training for 12 different meets, in rented pool space, and a full-time teaching job on the side. It shouldn’t be too tough for him to come up with 4 or 5 different workouts for different taper groups, I can’t imagine.
Last couple months Russian Yulia Efimova was practicing with Salo as well. She may move to LA for practicing after Russian Nationals
Hadn’t seen that, but good info!
Shortly after the announcement, Roland Schoeman tweeted at Dave Salo that he’d like to shoot him an email for some advice. Maybe another one headed that way? Not necessarily a breaststroker, but would still thrive in Salo’s training environment I feel.