After her National Age Group Record in the 200 free on day 5, Missy Franklin has already outdone that on day 6 with a new American Record (and all-time textile best) in the women’s 200 backstroke semifinal in 2:05.90. That clears the old mark set by Margaret Hoelzer at 2:06.09 during the 2008 US Olympic Trials.
This swim also, incidentally, clears the old textile best held by Jing Zhao at 2:06.46, and is the 5th-best performance ever in this event.
By default, her swim also betters the old 15-16 National Age Group Record held by Elizabeth Beisel from 2009 in 2:06.39. Franklin should have one more swim in this meet on the 400 medley relay.
Franklin now unifies the American Records, as she holds both the short course and long course 200 backstroke records.
The really scary thing about Franklin in this 200 backstroke is that she has visibly has a ton of room for improvement. When you watch her swims, her underwaters still aren’t great (Beisel was killing her on the walls), and with her size, one would have to imagine that she’s got the potential to make lot of improvement in that department. Her over-waters are clearly the best in the world right now. Even without seeing her finals swim yet, I think she’s on pace to break the World Record of 2:04.81, currently held by Kirsty Coventry.
For full day 6 finals session results and recaps, click here.
It’s great to see Dutch girl Sharon van Rouwendaal shave almost 2.5 seconds off of her PB at the WC and make the final! Medaling may not be possible, but at least she’s shown she has got a bright future ahead of her at the age of 17.
As a side note, Missy Franklin should cruise to the gold.
I dont think she will go to cal though BK, seeing as all the backstroke talent that they have and are bringing in. Stanford would be a good option, but when it comes down to it im telling you georgia or florida would be the best fits for her.
John – I really don’t think she’ll end up at Cal either, just because of the logistics. Someone brought up Florida earlier, and when I heard the explanation, it made a lot of sense to me. When you look at the swimmers they’re putting out right now (notably Lochte and Beisel, though I’m sure there are other examples) their underwaters are GREAT. Really she doesn’t have to pick a great backstroking school. She just has to pick a great “underwaters” school, because if nothing changed with her on top of the water stroke, and she had Beisel’s underwaters, nobody would beat her for the next 10 years.
I think Stanford is always going to be in the mix for her… Read more »
She has a couple more years to decide (I think); but I wonder if she will turn professional or join the college ranks?
In recent years, there have been interesting precedents set on both sides of the table by female swimmers faced with this decision.
Anyways, it is great to see Missy Franklin and many other young American swimmers beginning to assert themselves on an international level. Coughlin and Torres won’t be around forever!
We discussed after her great 200 free swim, but Franklin has made it extremely clear that she plans to swim in college. She’s already turned down something like $40,000 in prize money, and her parents both have great jobs, so she doesn’t need the money to pay for training. The only thing that I could see changing this is if she does something stupendous at the Olympics and somebody throws a Lochte/Phelps-like mid-6 figures endorsement at her. But it would have to be a pretty big check to change her mind from what we’ve heard at this point.
My guess is that she’ll end up at a top-tier academic institution (Stanford, Florida, Cal, etc. depending on what she wants to… Read more »
Lochte was amazing on Anchor, do bear in mind that the French anchor was sprinter Fabian Gilot and not a respected 200 freestyler, still a great anchor though, but it still only compares similarly to other splits & lead-offs in the race.
i am sure lochte and his coach could help her with the walls and underwater since he is the master of it. btw lochte clearly mvp of the meet, beat the french anchor by almost 3 secs in the last leg to give the us another gold!
Awesome swim.
It seems like she has lots of room to improvement yet, her start and the breakouts didn’t look that good to me.