So I think me just wanting to emulate Michael so much is why my 2 fly is the way it is.” He added: “Butterfly was something I had to work at, and I just loved racing next to Michael, and I did that enough that ultimately I would say the 200 butterfly is probably my second-best event. “Me doing butterfly is a testament to me wanting to swim the same event as Michael,” Kalisz said. Kalisz wanted to be like Mike, so he made himself into a world-class butterfly swimmer. But Kalisz grew up in the Baltimore suburbs, and his second home was Meadowbrook Aquatic & Fitness Center, which Phelps had made famous as the most illustrious in a long line of star swimmers produced by North Baltimore Aquatic Club. is the breaststroke, and he could probably be world-class in that stroke’s events if he put his mind (and his training) to it. Those in his wake included Chase Kalisz, 22, who finished fifth, having already earned a berth to the Rio Games with a victory in the 400-meter individual medley on Sunday. He qualified for his fifth Olympic team by winning in 1 minute 54.84 seconds, ahead of Tom Shields (1:55.81). Nobody was Phelps’s equal in the 200-meter butterfly final on Wednesday. Phelps has inspired a generation to swim, including a few world-caliber athletes who crafted competitive schedules in Phelps’s image. Phelps’s influence on the sport he set out to make more prominent, more professional, goes well beyond the eyeballs and the excitement he has brought to swimming since he appeared in his first United States trials, a much more subdued affair in Indianapolis in 2000. The crowds would be far smaller than 14,000, and fewer athletes would be extending their careers past college with the help of corporate endorsements.Īnd there would have been at least one fewer entrant in the 200-meter butterfly. If he had not strapped the sport to his broad back and climbed to the Olympic summit six times in Athens in 2004 and eight times in eight nights in Beijing in 2008, there would be no pre-finals light show at CenturyLink Center, no ticket scalpers. OMAHA - The United States Olympic swimming trials are the spectacle that Michael Phelps built.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |