2021 U.S. OLYMPIC SWIMMING TRIALS
- When:
- Wave I Dates: June 4-7, 2021
- Wave II Dates: June 13-20, 2021
- Prelims: 10am CDT | Finals: 7pm CDT
- Where: CHI Health Center / Omaha, Nebraska
- 2021 U.S. Olympic Trials Qualifying Cuts
- Wave I & II Event Order
- LCM (50m)
- Prelims Live Stream (NBC Olympics)
- Finals Live Stream (Olympic Channel)
- Wave I Psych Sheets
- Wave I Live Results
- Day 4 Finals Heat Sheet
16-year-old Jonny Kulow threw down a time of 23.06 in the heats of the 50m freestyle at the 2021 US Olympic Trials, moving himself up to a tie for 16th in the all-time 15-16 age group rankings.
Kulow, who swims for LAN Swim Team, entered the meet with a personal best of 23.16 that he posted at the 18& Under Spring Cup in Des Moines in early May. Swimming in heat 3 out of 12, Kulow sprinted past the field, slicing exactly a tenth of a second off of his best time.
With his performance, Kulow finished 20th overall in a field of 94 swimmers, moving up 62 places from his original seed of 82nd. Although he narrowly missed finals, Kulow was still the youngest swimmer to finish in the top-20 this morning, and he was amongst the youngest swimmers in the entire field.
Kulow, a member of the high school class of 2022, is currently committed to swim for Arizona State University. He was ranked as one of the Class of 2022’s “best of the rest” swimmers for the sprint freestyle events. However, over the past 2 months, Kulow has cut significant time in his long course freestyle events, indicating that he may have some major drops in short course. Kulow entered the 2021 season with a personal best of 24.26 in the 50m freestyle that he swam in 2019, which he has now cut over a second off of. In the 100 freestyle, Kulow has cut his best time from a 52.20 down to 50.39 over the course of the past season, dropping almost 2 seconds.
The current National Age Group Record for the boy’s 15-16 50 meter freestyle stands at a 22.33 posted by sprinter Michael Andrew back in 2016. Only 13 15-16 year-olds have ever cracked the 23 second barrier in the event, with the most recent being Daniel Diehl, who did so in early May 2021.
Johnny Kullow is a stud that will be seen in the Olympics in the near future. Way to go Johnny, Wyo Strong.
Great swim but let’s be honest… lucky break that he was in lane 8.
what’s up with the current in that lane? seems like everyone is going fast there…
Would be great if Omega Timing wasn’t used for the results in this meet, so that it would be easier to analyze the results to see whether some lanes are really disproportionately faster than others in the 50. Or, some paid staff member / nerd at SwimSwam could go through and take a look at this for all of us 🙂
(great swim though!)