This week at the Pan-Pacs will finally return some of the record-breaking excitement that we became accustomed to over the last 2 years, as many of the Pan-Pac Championship records will be broken. The last Pan-Pacs were held in the summer of 2007, before Speedo’s LZR suit revolutionized the swimming world.
Since the shiny rubber swim suits that have dominated the swimming scene for the last 2 years were put away 8 months ago, however, we still have not seen a single world-record broken.
At last week’s European Championships, French swimmer Camille Lacourte came excruciatingly close in the 50 and 100 backstrokes. His 50m time of 24.07 was just a fingernail off of Liam Tancock’s mark of 24.04 set in Rome, and his 100m time was 52.11, just off of Aaron Peirsol’s mark of 51.94. His swims were expected to challenge records by many, as it is widely believed that advances in backstroke biomechanics make it the best candidate for the next record. But he still came up just short.
There have also been plenty of pre-suit World Records broken, notably Cesar Cielo (21.55) and Fred Bosquet (21.36) going obscenely fast times in the 50 free, but still no actual World Records broken.
There are, however, a few candidates at this week’s Pan-Pac Championships who could, with good swims, approach world marks.
In my opinion, the best chance is going to be Rebecca Soni in the 200 breast. In Bareclona in June, she swam a 2:21.41, compared to Canadian Annamay Pierse’s mark of 2:20.12. Soni is miles ahead of the world in this event right now: Even after Euro’s, the second best time (Leisel Jones) is 2.04 seconds slower. At US Nationals, Soni went a 2:21.60…and won by 4.9 seconds over Amanda Beard.
Simply put, Soni hasn’t seen anything resembling a challenge from anyone this season. There’s no way she was tapered for US Nationals (her warmup probably would’ve put her on the squad) so I’d imagine she still has a lot of room to drop. She has dropped all other events (like the 200 IM she swam at Nationals) to put her entire focus on the breaststroke. She could potentially challenge all 3 World Records (1.18 seconds off in the 100 breast, .83 off in the 50), but I think her best chance is in the 200.
This record will go down sometime between now and 2012. Soni is swimming at an obscene level right now compared to the rest of the world. At the very least, expect a run at the pre-polyurethane mark (Leisel Jones, 2:20.54) set in 2006.
The next candidate is Ryan Lochte, whose Nationals time of 1:54.84 was within a stone’s throw of his own World Record of 1:54.10 in the 200 IM.
On the one hand, I like Lochte’s chances to come close. Now that he’s proven that his groin and knee can withstand a full meet schedule, he’s had 2 weeks to really get his mind right and nail down his breaststroke.
On the other hand, given the number of disruptions he’s had in his training due to injury, I don’t know how much faster Lochte can really go. He put up some amazing times at Nationals, but when looking at how fast he was after missing so much pool time with injury, I’d bet he’s just trying to hold onto that through Pan-Pacs. Then again, I doubted Lochte at Nationals for the same reasons, and was obviously proven wrong.
For the record, his 1:54.84 broke the pre-poly record of Michael Phelps set at 1:54.98 during 2007 Worlds.
Speaking of the Great One, Phelps could challenge his own mark the 100 fly of 49.82. You might recall that he set this mark in another photo finish with Milorad Cavic at last year’s World Championships after the two traded jabs in the media over the validity of the suits. To prove his point, Phelps swam the race in the LZR. Relative to Cavic’s X-Glide, he might as well have been swimming in a diaper. Yet he still won the race and broke the world record.
The fact that this record was set in a suit that is only marginally better than the jammer that Phelps will have on this week mentally allows him to believe that the record is, in fact, breakable.
The mitigating circumstance here is that Phelps has admitted many times over the past few weeks that he’s not in the kind of shape he needs to be. An out of shape Phelps, however, still can throw up blistering times in the 100 fly. His time at Nationals of 50.65 sniffed Ian Crocker’s pre-poly mark of 50.40 that stood for just shy of 4 years. As an indication of how good Crocker’s record was, it was one of the few records that survived the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the only of Phelps’ 8 gold medals that was not accompanied by a World Record.
Do I think any of these records will be broken? In all honesty, not really. If anyone is going to do it, I think it’s Soni–even though her season best makes her the furthest of the three from the mark. But we might have to keep waiting until 2011 World’s in Shanghai to see another mark go down.