Drew Kibler was left off of the United States men’s 4×100 freestyle relay this morning, but based on his post via Instagram, it looks like he will be on it tonight.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce8nJLqrZpa/
Kibler holds a personal best time of 48.25 which he swam to finish fourth at the US World Championship Trials in April 2022. Typically, the two ‘fastest’ swimmers are left off of the prelims relay to save up energy for tonight. When this is done, it also means tough decisions for the Team USA coaches as to who to keep on the relay and who to take off based on prelims swims.
With these decisions comes the math which indicates that Kibler probably shouldn’t have gotten a free pass without swimming prelims. Kibler was only fourth at Trials meaning the second (Brooks Curry) and third (Ryan Held) place finishers both swam on the prelims relay.
| Kibler Flat Time | Curry Flat Best | Curry Relay Prelims | Held Flat Best |
Held Relay Prelims
|
| 48.25 | 48.04 | 47.76 | 47.39 | 47.13 |
Both Kibler and Curry went best times in the finals of the 2022 US World Championship Trials. The difference is that Curry was 0.21 faster at Trials and swam on the prelims relay this morning. This may indicate that the US coaches saw something during training camp that gave them the confidence to leave Kibler off of the prelims relay.
46. incoming
Aged horribly 😭
Looks like too much was read into that quote. He won’t be swimming on the relay. Unless we hear something unambiguous from him or a coach we can only speculate. Maybe he asked to be left off to rest for tomorrow or he’s not 100% despite his comment.
Lol why would he post this. He ended up getting left off
It’s Ress
USA bout to flex by leaving Dressel off
I bet Dressel is 47.5 leading off tonight.
I’m not familiar with WC rules so I’ll ask if all six have to swim in either/or prelims and finals like the Olympic relays?
No. For swimmers like Held (relay only), they need to use him on either prelims or finals or else the relay gets DQ’d. Kibler doesn’t need to swim this relay because he has other races, as he will race the 200 free and 4×200.
This some bull jive if Ress is left off tonight. Brooks should have rested instead of Kibler