Five Big Things From Night One of the Austin Pro Series

#1 — Katie Ledecky’s Range

Sometimes, you’re the victim of your own success.  In this case, the “you” isn’t so much Katie Ledecky as it is her distance freestyle swims.  In the last women’s A-final of the session, the greatest distance freestyler of this generation (if not ever) swam her 400m free in 3:59.94.  That’s the fifth-fastest swim ever, but we’ve become so accustomed to watching Ledecky do crazy things in-season with the distance events that we hardly batted an eye.

It was Ledecky’s sprinting earlier in tonight’s session that was much more intriguing.  While she “only” finished second, behind Sarah Sjostrom’s new U.S. Open record swim, she did touch in a still-blazing time of 53.75.  Let’s put that in context:

a.  That’s her best time ever.  Her previous best coming into today was a 54.55 from last year’s edition of this meet.  She swam a 54.45 in preliminaries this morning, then knocked seven-tenths of a second off her personal best.  In January.

b.  According to the current USA Swimming documents, that puts her as the 6th-fastest U.S. woman ever in this event, sandwiched between Natalie Coughlin and Dara Torres.

c.  Her time tonight would have earned her at least a relay spot on every single U.S. major international meet team ever.

Ledecky’s 100 free time has been trending for the past year in such a way that she could be considered in the conversation for a spot on the U.S. women’s 4×100 free relay this summer, whether or not she chooses to compete in the event at Trials, and tonight’s swim makes that clearer than ever.

#2 — Doubles, Doubles Everywhere

Ledecky’s double was one of several notable doubles of the night.  Sjostrom broke the U.S. Open records in the 100 free and 100 fly within 35 minutes of each other.  Michael Phelps swam the same double, and after finishing sixth in the 100 free, cranked out a sub-52 to win the 100 fly.  In fact, quite a few men joined Phelps with that double, including Ryan Lochte.  The 100 free/fly double is one of the easier event combinations, and it will be interesting to see if Phelps and Lochte cannot only challenge what was once conventional wisdom by swimming world-class times in their 30s, but if they are able to continue to attack some of the tougher doubles and see success.  Now that Phelps seems to have fully embraced adding the 200 fly to his schedule, he could end up swimming the final of that event and being called on to bolster the U.S. men’s 4×200 free relay on day 4 of swimming at the Rio Games.

#3 — U.S. Breaststroke Picture Getting Clearer…and Murkier?

Katie Meili smoked the B-final of the 200 breast, with her time of 2:23.69 exactly a second faster than the winner of the A-final, Laura Sogar.  Meili knocked almost five seconds off her personal best in this event today, her previous best being a 2:28.53 from 2013.  Last summer, Meili had the fastest time among U.S. women in the 100 breast by over a second, despite representing the U.S. in the Pan-American Games rather than the World Championships, thanks to USA Swimming’s much-maligned decision to pick the 2015 squads based on 2014 times.  Meiji was selected for the Pan-Am team in only the 100 breast, and chose not to swim the 200 breast at Summer Nationals, so we didn’t get to see her swim this fully tapered last season.  Nonetheless, her time this evening would have ranked her third among U.S. women last year, behind Micah Lawrence and Sogar, and it’s now clear that she should be a factor in this event come Omaha.

Meanwhile, the men’s side doesn’t have any one swimmer rocketing toward the top of the ranks like Meili.  About a year ago, we would have said that Kevin Cordes, Nic Fink, and Cody Miller were pretty clearly the top three names in this event.  Since then, Will Licon out-dueled Cordes in the 2015 NCAA Championships with one of the top short course yards times ever and placed second at 2015 Summer Nationals, Josh Prenot won gold at the 2015 World University Games, and Andrew Wilson won the 100m breaststroke and placed third at last summer’s nationals, muddying the waters considerably.  All of those six except Miller were in the final of this event tonight, and Prenot overcame early leads by Wilson and Fink to pull out the victory.  This is shaping up to be one of more interesting races heading into this summer.

#4 — Nothing New in the Men’s 100 Free

Can “nothing new” be considered a big thing?  Given the buzz and speculation that always surrounds the 100 free and the 4×100 free relay, we’ll go with it.  But, if you were hoping for some groundbreaking revelations when it came to the U.S. men and the 100 free, you were out of luck tonight.  Nathan Adrian was the only U.S. swimmer under 49 seconds, as he took the victory.  Phelps, Lochte, Jimmy Feigen, and Matt Grevers were all in the A-final with times that were not remarkably great or remarkably bad.  Michael Chadwick, who had something of a breakout year in 2015, joined them, while Anthony Ervin finished in the middle of C-final.  Jack Conger scratched the 100 free in preliminaries, while Ryan Murphy swam a bit slower in the C-final than he did in preliminaries.  Cullen Jones, Ryan Hoffer, and Seth Stubblefield all missed finals completely.

Obviously everyone is at different points in their training, and none of this means anything conclusive, but we didn’t get to see the sort of potentially-gamechanging swim like we did with Ledecky in the 100 free this evening.

#5 — Sjostrom vs. Vollmer in the 100 Fly

I had initially figured that we’d written enough on Sjostrom, but as I started thinking again about the biggest storylines from the night, it became clear that I just could not leave this out.

About three and a half years ago, Dana Vollmer was the world record holder in the 100 fly after winning the gold medal in London.  Sjostrom finished fourth.  In 2013, Sjostrom won gold at the Barcelona world championships.  Vollmer earned the bronze.  Then, Vollmer took an extended break from swimming and went on to have a child.  In the meantime, Sjostrom became the dominant force in the 100 fly, which culminated in her breaking Vollmer’s world record this past summer, and tonight she broke Vollmer’s U.S. Open record.

Vollmer’s spot on the U.S. Olympic team is not 100% guaranteed, and won’t be until Olympic Trials, but no other American swimmer has been faster than her this Olympic cycle, and only Kelsi Worrell has been faster over the past two years than Vollmer was tonight.  Should Vollmer earn one of the top two spots at Olympic Trials, the showdown between Sjostrom and Vollmer could be one of the most anticipated swimming events of Rio, as the 28 year-old Vollmer will attempt to defend her crown in the 100 fly agains the woman who took her world record.