The preliminary session of day 4 brought some exciting swims, surely waking everyone up this morning.
One notable swim-of-the-day came from Becca Mann. After tying this morning for 8th place with Quinn Carrozza, a decision had to be made. Like always, most people expected a swim-off (that seems to be the typical norm when two swimmers tie) in order to have a place in the A-Final. Much to our surprise, though, this was not the case, and there was no swim-off, as anticipated.
No swimmer can be forced to do a swim-off. They can opt out of the tie-breaking swim, and some sort of arrangement can be made to see who gets the spot (rock-paper-scissors/flip a coin to see who wins?). Mann, Carrozza, and their coaches got together to make the arrangement (much more practically than R-P-S), and decided that Mann would take the 8th spot in the A-Final, while Carrozza would take the top spot in the B-Final. The actual reasoning behind this decision is still unknown to us, as is HOW they came to this decision.
Lucky for us, that same excitement from this morning should be in the air tonight, as there are very few, minor scratches for finals. Both scratches came from the men’s and women’s 400 freestyle, who, ironically, both placed 15th in today’s prelims: Santa Clara’s Alex Wold (3.55.01) on the men’s side, and SoNoCo’s Alicia Mathieu on the women’s side.
Taking Wold’s spot tonight will be Sean Ryan (3:55.33), while Andie Taylor takes Mathieu’s spot for the women (4:15.10). Both will be competing in the B-Final.
Becca Mann LOVES SWIMMING!!!
(And I do too!)
Love the pic of Becca above!
This meet has solidified what we glimpsed last year at Trials: Becca Mann is a machine. Her day is coming.
Yes, but we still have a while before she can be a real contender for events other than open water. In open water, she is a beast but she still has to improve her pool events.
It’s possible that she is not fully tapered at this meet because she is focusing on the OW events in Barcelona. Maybe she’ll do better at the US Open.