2024 U.S. Olympic Trials: One More Look at the Data

Thank you to Barry Revzin for running the numbers. 

With U.S. Trials in the rearview mirror, let’s take one final look at the data from nine days of high-pressure racing.

We’ve done a few of these before, including breaking down the entry data, checking in mid-meet, and investigating if Hoosiers had a hometown advantage. In this article, we’ll be breaking down improvement from seed time for individual performances.

To calculate this metric, an athlete’s best performance across all rounds of an event (if they swam multiple rounds) is compared to their seed time.

Who Drops, Who Adds, Who Makes the Trials Cut? (Reprise)

In an earlier article, we noted that most swimmers at this meet add to their seed time. At that point, we reported that across 1040 swims, only 27.22% of them represented a drop from seed time. That number slightly improved with 655 more swims, but it’s still less than a third (29.44%).

As we did in a previous article, we included rows for the Indiana LSC and the Sandpipers of Nevada club. These cohorts include athletes who represented that LSC/team at Trials.

The first time we published this data, athletes from the Hoosier state were beating the average in improved swims as a cohort (30.00% to 28.37%). However, as the meet wore on, they slipped below the average, putting an end to that hypothesis.

The biggest drops (by percentage) all came in the first half of the meet. Liam Bell still tops the overall rankings, courtesy of his 2.26-second drop in the 100 breaststroke. When we first reported this data, 17 prelim events had swum. Eleven more were raced by the end of the meet. This could indicate fatigue across the athletes as the meet wore on, as there doesn’t appear to be any correlation between shorter or longer events.

Tracking how many athletes made the Trials cut in their swim is an interesting metric to see the level of performance that was on display. It could indicate how many athletes targeted this meet versus those who grabbed their cut in the eleventh hour.

Check out the table below that breaks improvement down by event.

Despite many reports of an American weakness in the men’s 400 freestyle, that was the event where the most athletes (by percentage) dropped from seed. While it’s unlikely to translate into Olympic medals this summer, it’s a hopeful statistic for those concerned about yards-centric training on mid-distance training.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the women’s 400 IM, where only six athletes improved from seed. This follows a trend of female athletes under-performing compared to seed time; we see the same trend when viewing men’s and women’s events, and the four events with the lowest improvement percentage are all women’s events.

The only athlete who made this list with an Olympic qualifying swim is Notre Dame’s Chris Guiliano. He became the first American man since Matt Biondi (1988) to qualify individually in the 50-100-200 freestyle. He was seeded way back in 29th in the 200 free, but put together a surprising swim out of lane 1 to book his ticket to Paris.

Alex Walsh is the other Paris Olympian who leads the rankings in an event. In her case, she punched a best time in the 200 breast to finish 3rd behind Virginia teammate Kate Douglass and Tokyo silver medalist Lilly King. Walsh ended up booking her ticket in the 200 IM, where she is the defending silver medalist.

Cumulative Performance Metric

To put a bow on our Trials coverage, we’re debuting a new metric for tracking a swimmer’s meet performance. Here, we’ve summed an athlete’s improvement percentage across all their entered events. Take a look at the top 10:

Leading the way is Louisville’s Tommy Bried, who crushed massive personal bests in the 200 fly and 200 breast on opposite ends of June 18th’s prelim session. He made both semifinals, improving in the 200 fly again but fading a bit in the 200 breast. Still, he had a whopping 6.79% cumulative improvement across all four of his events, which also included the IM events.

The top three on this list are all ACC swimmers, who we noted were having a strong meet after seven sessions.

Caeleb Dressel also makes an appearance on this list. While he didn’t touch his personal best times (which includes the world record in the men’s 100 butterfly), he made his third Olympic team after a tumultuous two years, swimming his fastest since his 2023 comeback.

Finally, here are the top 10 teams by this metric.

This stat is a bit misleading; teams with fewer swims overall (in other words, fewer swimmers making finals) tended to lead the group. Alto Swim Club, which has a number of Stanford swimmers, is an exception.

If you’re wondering where powerhouse squads like California or Texas lie, their club teams rank last, ahead of all the unattached swimmers. However, this is across 53 and 60 swims respectively, the most and third-most swims overall for a team. (Texas is tied with Florida.) It makes sense considering how many high-caliber swimmers represent these teams. Swimmers who are good enough to vie for Team USA don’t necessarily need to hit best times to make it through the rounds.