2016 Olympic gold medalist and NC State Wolfpack team member Ryan Held made it back to his home state of Illinois yesterday to compete in a local meet. Representing Springfield YMCA, 21-year-old Held will be competed at the FAST Spring Fever meet held at Edwardsville High School’s Chuck Fruit Aquatic Center.
Held was originally entered in both the 200m freestyle and 100m butterfly events for the afternoon of Saturday, May 20th, but he wound up scratching the fly race. He also wound up using the 200 event as a 100 split exercise, firing off an opening split of 50.49 before cooling his engines almost completely for a ‘swim down’ for the remainder of the race. He ultimately finished in 2:24.20. Results can be found under ‘2017 FAST Spring Fever Invitational’ within Meet Mobile.
Held attended Sacred Heart-Griffin High School in Springfield, Illinois where he was a multiple time state champion and record breaker. In his senior year in 2014 he was named Illinois State Swimmer of the Year. At the Olympic Games in Rio, Held was a prelims and finals swimmer on the men’s 4x100m freestyle relay which won the gold medal. At NC State, Held was a member of the NCAA title-winning 4x100y freestyle relay and earned runner-up status in the individual 50y freestyle.
So basically this was an autograph signing.?
It turned into that. Warm up was at 1230. Didn’t swim until 4:55pm. No warm up/ warm down pool or lane. Sat on the deck for nearly 4 hours before swimming. Not what he was planning on. Didn’t want to risk injury.
Okay he came back waaaay too slow
he stopped for about 15 seconds to find out his time after the first 100.
He’s talking about within the 100
So he had a 15 second break and after that break came home in 1:09?
It was a warm down. He had to get out and get ready to fly back to Raleigh.
Hope he did not warm up for this
He did not.