The 15-16 boys from the King Aquatic Club not only matched the prowess of their 17-18’s, following one National Age Group Record with another, as they took down the 200 medley all-time National Age Group mark on Friday at the PNS Long Course Championships in Seattle.
The group of Thomas Anderson (15), Josh Maclurg (15), Mathias Oh (16) and Tommy Thach (16) not only swam a very fast 1:44.60, they absolutely bloodied a 2000 record set by Irvine Novaquatics in 2000.
Anybody who hears “Irvine” and “2000” starts salivating, because they know how good that group was. The old record holders were Aaron Peirsol, Nicholas Yu, Mike Cavic, and Eric Quillen. Cavic and Peirsol are two of the greats swimmers of their generation, and that group teamed up to break three National Age Group relay records.
But here’s the scary thing: the Piersol/Cavic record was only 1:46.76. That means this group of young swimmers broke an Aaron Peirsol/Mike Cavic NAG relay record by more than two seconds.
The splits are really stunning:
Anderson, 26.18
Maclurg 30.60
Oh 24.39
Thach 23.43
Those are all really impressive splits, but maybe the most among them are Anderson’s 26.1 at only 15, and Oh’s 24.39.
This group actually beat King’s ‘A’ relay, made up entirely of 18-year olds, on each of the four splits, including Thach outspliting top-20 high school recruit in the class of 2014 Thane Maudslien 23.43-23.66.
This is the second weekend in a row where we’ve seen these sorts of records fall like dominoes from swimmers on the same team, in the same training group, and even from different genders or age groups.
They also broke the 15-18 Record that was previously held by the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club group of Sean Patton, Casey Beckwith, Ricky Berens, and Matthew Patton in 1:46.78. (This is another example of a 15-16 record from before 15-18 records were recognized, but that loophole is now closed).
Maclurg trains under Ken Spencer, while the other three are all under Tommy Hannan (as do all of the 17-18 girls).
These guys are really fast!
http://www.socalswim.org/results/resultdisplay.aspx?resultid=bd8f60c2893847309bc9002683c93ec5&returnurl=%2fResults%2fResultList.aspx%3fCategoryId%3d0826638d6931485195489f26ef214ff2%26orderBy%3dResult.MeetStartDateTime%26sortDirection%3d1%26page%3d19%26q%3d
No splits, but here are the results.
What were the splits of the original relay?
Mackenzie – wasn’t able to find them anywhere.