Video courtesy SwimSwam co-founder Garrett McCaffrey.
Michael Phelps says he has swum his last races ever in yards with his exhibition swims on Saturday during the Arizona State versus Arizona dual.
Phelps raced fellow American Record holders David Nolan and Matt Grevers, plus a handful of other post-grads, in a 100 yard IM and a 200 yard free during the meet.
He says he would’ve liked to have go under 1:34, but he’s happy that he found a little speed on the front-end, and that he showed himself that he’s still go that in it.
Discussing the 100 IM (which Phelps says was just for fun), Phelps says that one of the biggest differences is that Grevers’ underwaters are better than his, which is a strange thing to hear given Phelps’ history as a dominant underwater swimmer.
Phelps’ all-time best swim in the 200 yard free is a 1:32.08, which he swam in 2005; we couldn’t find any record of him ever having swum the 100 yard IM before (which doesn’t mean he hasn’t, the USA Swimming database just becomes less reliable prior to 2001).
Despite coming out of Phelps’ mouth, I don’t necessarily believe that Grever’s underwaters are ‘better’ than Phelps’. Faster perhaps, but I think there are more aspects than just speed; I think there’s ability to maintain speed off a start, ability to maintain speed off a wall, stamina, speed on your stomach vs. back. As an example, I’ve known two swimmers with great underwaters but one was primarily a butterflyer and the other a backstroker (though because of college they both swam the 100 fly/back combo) and they would crush each other on the underwaters of their respective strokes. As for the stamina aspect, there were many swimmers that had ‘faster’ underwaters than I personally had, but already by the 3rd… Read more »
I’m sure everyone in the rest of the world would agree these guys & girls are ready to leave the kiddy pool behind them. If the US needs some sort of economic stimulus, how about some construction projects to replace all that 19th century aquatic infrastructure.
SCY will not miss Michael Phelps. 🙂
The grownups swim in the big pool.
And many of them also swim in the short pool. Two Olympic gold medalists in the 100 scy IM exhibition would seem to prove that.