The trials for the US Olympic Swim team are being held in Omaha
Nebraska this week. The Suski
family (Jack, Andy and Alena) and the Sullivan family
(Wyatt and Emerson) decided to team up web journal the events. Wyatt and Emerson go first (they attended June
29 and June 30):
Saturday, June 28
Right after our swim meet with Novato,
we left for Omaha to see the
swimming Olympic trials. On our plane ride, we met a 13-year-old girl who we think might
make it on the Olympic team some day. Her best event was the 200-meter
backstroke in which she is ranked 19th in the nation, but she also
swims the 100-meter backstroke, where she is ranked 42nd in the
nation. Her name is Madison White and she is from Danville.
She told us that her coach is engaged to Natalie Coughlin, so we think he
coach is Sean’s friend.
Sunday, June 29
In the morning we went to see the
preliminaries for the 400M men IM, 400M men free, the 100M men breast, and the
400M women IM. Although it was only preliminaries and there were lots of heats,
the crowd was very big and very loud. Michael
Phelps was expected to win the 400 men IM, but since he wasn’t trying his
hardest, Ryan Lochte came out with the fastest time.
This didn’t matter, because it was only the preliminaries, but it still was
surprising. It was pretty cool to
actually see Michael Phelps swim since we have heard so much about him. His swimming is incredibly smooth.
Finals and semifinals are always
held in a second, much shorter, evening session. Sunday’s finals had some pretty interesting
races. In the 400 men IM final, Ryan Lochte broke
Michael Phelps’ old world record, but Michael Phelps still beat Lochte
to set the new world record. This was very surprising because Michael
Phelps was projected to win by 3 or more seconds. Right after the race we got these sweet
pictures of us with Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte:
In the 400 women IM, Katie Hoff started under
the American Record pace. She was just finishing the backstroke part of the IM
when the announcer realized that she was under world record pace. In the end,
Katie Hoff ended up getting a best time by over a second and breaking the world
record. Whenever the announcer says \"they are now under world record pace\", the
crowd goes nuts.
Monday, June 30
In the
morning preliminaries, the highlight of the whole trip happened for us, in the
last 2 heats of the 100M women Backstroke; the world record was broken twice.
In the 2nd to last heat, Hayley McGregory broke Natalie Coughlin’s
world record, but she would barely have time to call her parents about it,
because in the next heat, Natalie Coughlin broke it back with a time of 59.03.
This is the current world record. The crowd went nuts again. We were all hoping that Madison White (the 13
year old girl we met on the plane) would make it to the semi-finals and it was
fun to watch her try. She won her heat
and took over a second off her best time but just missed the cut. It was cool
to see her right before her race because she looked so small compared to all
the other much older backstrokers. The Suskis got
there in time for the evening finals so we briefly met up with them and got
this nice picture:
No worlds records in the Monday night finals but it was fun
to see the world record holder, Brendan Hansen, win our favorite stroke, the
100M breaststroke.
Tuesday, July 1
Tuesday morning we went to the prelims. We sat behind Jason Lezak’s sisters and saw Phelps swim the 200m Fly. That evening we saw Phelps win the 100m back and Ryan Lochte get third. Phelps had scratched from the 200m free to focus on the 200m fly semi finals.
Wednesday, July 2
Wednesday morning we saw the men’s 100m free prelims. During this even Jason Lezak broke the American Record in the first heat. In the second heat Garrett Weber-Gale broke it again. In the third heat, Phelps Cullen Jones and Ben Wildman-Tobriner swam. None of them broke Weber-Gale's new AR. This was fun to watch because WildmanT is a local boy who used to swim in the Marin Swim League. He still holds some records in the MSL.
We saw Deborah Roth swim a 100m free for her time trials. (Redwood High School)
After the prelims, we were standing outside the Center and Mark Gangloff was signing autographs. We went over and got his autograph and wished him well. That night we saw the men’s 100m free semi-final, which included Wildman-T.and Jones who swam next to each other.
The next event was 200m Fly where Phelps came back and crushed the competition. We also go to see Brendan Hansen swim in the 200m Breast semi-finals.
Before going back to the Qwest Center for the finals, we went to the coffee shop in the Hilton. We were sitting at a table and I looked up and saw Eric Vendt. He walked out of the Hilton and it hits me, “That’s Eric Vendt!” I get up and run after him with my camera and Alena follows with a t-shirt but no pen. Andy makes his way over with the pen. We take a couple of pictures with Eric and wish him good luck in the 1500m. He finished taking to us and then walked through the rain to the Qwest Center. He said that the rain did not bother him. We forgot, he is a swimmer - he likes water.
Coughlin and Katie Hoff swam in the 200IM finals later that night. Both of them qualified to go to Beijing in the event.
During the awards ceremony we left. While walking out of the Qwest Center, we saw Ryan Lochte standing with a couple of teammates. Cullen Jones was standing nearby, by himself. We walked over to Jones. Cullen Jones is huge and one of the nicest guys we have met. We talked to him for awhile and wished him luck.
We then walked over to Ryan Lochte. No one was around him. We talked with him . He is not that tall and he is very mellow sounding when he talks.
Thursday, July 3
Thursday morning we saw Phelps and Lochte swim the 200m IM. They both swam well and did something funny. After Lochte had finished his heat, he rested in the water and talked to Phelps, who was getting ready to get on the blocks for his heat. They are great friends and competitors.
After the prelims. we went back to the Hilton coffee shop. We were waiting for a shuttle to a museum. We saw Kaite Ziegler getting her lunch. Andy, Alena and I started walking after her to get her autograph. As we were walking, I see Amanda Beard walking in a door nearby. I ran over to Alena and grabbed the pen (we only had one Sharpie). I walked over to Amanda and tell her that I love that she is back swimming after taking a two year break. Andy and Alena come over and Amanda sighs our shirts. When we asked if we could have our picture taken with her she says, \"I’m a mess\", but she let us take the picture anyway. We wished Amanda luck.
We walked quickly to catch up with Katie at the elevator. We wished her luck and took a picture.
Thursday night we saw Eric Shanteau and Scott Usher beat Brendan Hansen in the 200m breast final. It was tough to watch. Hansen was very relaxed about the race and said that he gave it his all. Hansen seems very low key and is a class act in the way of sportsmanship.
The 200m back semi final was next. Arron Piersol and Ryan Lochte were swimming in separate heats. Arron won the first heat and Ryan won the second making them the top two seeds going into the final. Dara Torres swam in the women’s 100m free where she placed second. Garrett Weber-Gale and Jason Lezak went 1,2 in the men’s 100m free final and Cullen Jones placed third. Cullen got a spot on the relay team.
The last race we got to see was the men’s 200m I.M. semifinal Michael Phelps was in the first of the two heats and beat Ryan Lochte’s time to be the top seed in the finals.
We had a great time at the Olympic trials, and hope we
inform you with this report.
