Murphy Lays Down Law Of 52.2 Ticket To 3rd Olympics A Golden Bear On The Prowl To Paris
The 100m backstroke battles headlined day 3 action at U.S. Trials as Ryan Murphy set the global pace for Olympic season with a 52.22 ticket to a third Olympic Games and Regan Smith set an American record of 57.45 in her semi-final after watching Katharine Berkoff join the sub-58 club.
It was a night in Indianapolis that featured five events significant to American relay power in Paris, with wins for Lilly King in the 100m breaststroke (1:05.43) – but no defence for Lydia Jacoby), and in the 200 free finals Katie Ledecky (1:55.22) and Luke Hobson (1:44.89).
Ledecky, King & Hobson Lead The U.S. Race For Relays Chasing Pride In Paris
U.S. Trials For Paris – Results in Full
A fitting thing to have a Team USA captain holding the torch for all of that. World champion in 2023, Murphy will race Rylov-free as a title contender once more for 100m backstroke gold eight years after double glory in Rio and three years after making headlines around the world as the tussle spilled from pool to deck.
Murphy, The Chill Of Cold War & The Defence That Cannot Be
Three years ago at the Covid-delayed Games in Japan, Murphy took bronze in the 100m and silver in the 200m, after which, as I wrote at the time, “a chilly breeze of Cold War cut through the heat and humidity here in Tokyo when the “D” word and Murphy pointed to the elephant in the room behind the plughole where Team Tchaikovsky’s tale is told.”
Those pondering the truth about 2015-1017 positive tests and 2021 positive tests among Chinese swimmers heading into Paris, may well look back at Murphy’s stand in Tokyo with a sense of frustration. This is what he said:
“It is a huge mental drain on me to go throughout the year, [knowing] that I’m swimming in a race that’s probably not clean, and that is what it is. The people that know a lot more about the situation made the decision they did [to allow Russian athletes to compete as the Russian Olympic Committee]. It frustrates me, but I have to swim the field that’s next to me. I don’t have the bandwidth to train for the Olympics at a very high level and try to lobby the people who are making the decisions that they’re making the wrong decisions.”
Ryan Murphy – Photo: a first world 100m title in 2023 – by Patrick B. Kraemer / MAGICPBK
It would be good to say ‘water under the bridge’ but we all know it is far from that and the ghosts of doping will haunt Paris too.
Murphy licked his Tokyo wounds, got back to work, won his first 100m world title last year and now he’s headed back to Olympic waters, while Evgeny Rylov is home in Russia. He’s barred from the Paris Games because he is not eligible under the rules of engagement at a time of Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine: the swimmer appeared at a Putin rally in Moscow with a Z symbol for war on his kit and has since defended that position.
Only those Russians who have no connection to the war and its politics are supposed to make it to Paris under a neutral flag. Some Ukrainian athletes won’t be there either: some lost their lives under Russian attack defending a country where the sports infrastructure has been devastated and members of the sports community given permission to leave have been scattered to neighbouring, mostly European countries, their lives upended, to say the least.
Meanwhile, Murphy, 29 next month, is back, 12 years after his first Olympic trials campaign. In 2012, he missed the Olympic team as a hungry 17-year-old. He finishing sixth in the 100 back (53.92) and fourth in the 200m (1:57.39).
His 52.22 today is the ninth fastest of his career on a list topped by the World record 51.85 he set leading the U.S medley relay to gold and the last and 23rd triumph of Michael Phelps in Olympic waters.
Speaking through USA Swimming, Murphy spoke of the winning drive in him: “I feel like I’ve always got a fire under my butt. I feel like I’m a really motivated person…I want to win every time I touch the water, whether that’s a Monday morning practice or an Olympic final.”
His 100 back record of 2016 is American these days, the global standard in the hands of Italian Thomas Ceccon at 51.50. Murphy’s best tops a career list of four sub-52s and 12 swims in the ranks of at the all-time top 20 American performances over 100m. He also has four of the best 10 ever worldwide.
Murphy is eight years and a marriage beyond that stellar campaign in Rio, where he set an Olympic record of 51.97 for gold in the 100m, took the 200 gold in 1:53.62 and on the final night of competition led the USA medley relay with that 51.85 World record inside Aaron Peirsol‘s 51.94 from US nationals in 2009. The relay, with fellow Golden Bear Nathan Adrian, Cody Miller and Phelps claimed gold in an Olympic-record 3:27.95.
There was gold for Murphy in Tokyo, too, in the 4x100m medley in an epic battle with a Britain quartet that had taken the USA down at 2019 World titles.
Today at Trials for Paris, Hunter Armstrong took the second berth at the Games in 52.72, Jack locked out by just 0.02sec in 52.74. Here’s how it went:
Smith & Berkoff Chuck A Gauntlet Back At Aussies McKeown & O’Callaghan
Regan Smith crushed the 100 and 200 backstroke World records at the 2019 World Championships, the longer race (2:03.69) for gold, the shorter race (57.57) for medley relay gold. Since then, she’s struggled to replicate that speed but in the past two years in Arizona under the guidance of coach Bob Bowman, butterfly the stroke that delivered an Olympic medal, Smith had edged back to best backstroke form.
Today in her semi of the 100m, she swam inside her best form for the second time this year: the 57.51 American record she set last month is now her second best, 57.47 the new standard, 0.14se shy of Australia triple Olympic champion Kaylee McKeown‘s World record 57.33.
At Australian trials, McKeown hit all her targets and gave the impression that energy, physical and emotional, was being controlled, reserved, contained. McKeown took the Australian trials race in 57.41, Mollie O’Callaghan making the Dolphin nation the first to deliver two members of the sub-58 club, in 57.88 – and the first to have two in one race.
The U.S. is the next nation to have two in the club, courtesy of a 57.83 lifetime best from Katharine Berkoff, the daughter of David of the same name and an Olympic podium placer who was among the pioneers of submarine backstroke starts at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
The battle in Indianapolis is not yet done. The final ahoy:
Team USA Prospects – After 3 Days…
Trials Top Two Finishers and Relay Top Fours:
Women:
Erin Gemmell (Potomac, Md./Nation’s Capital Swim Club)
Katie Grimes (Las Vegas, Nev./Sandpipers of Nevada)
Torri Huske (Arlington, Va./Arlington Aquatic Club)
Lilly King (Evansville, Ind./Indiana Swim Club)
Katie Ledecky (Bethesda, Md./Gator Swim Club)
Paige Madden (Mobile, Ala./New York Athletic Club)
Gretchen Walsh (Nashville, Tenn./University of Virginia)
Emma Weber (Boulder, Colo./Cavalier Aquatics/Piedmont Family YMCA)
Claire Weinstein (Las Vegas, Nev./Sandpipers of Nevada)
Emma Weyant (Sarasota, Fla./Gator Swim Club)
Men:
Hunter Armstrong (Dover, Ohio/New York Athletic Club)
Nic Fink (Morristown, N.J./New York Athletic Club
Chris Guiliano (Douglassville, Pa./University of Notre Dame),
Luke Hobson (Reno, Nev./Longhorn Aquatics)
Drew Kibler (Carmel, Ind./New York Athletic Club)
Ryan Murphy (Ponte Vedra Beach, Calif./California Aquatics)
Aaron Shackell (Carmel, Ind./Carmel Swim Club)
Kieran Smith (Ridgefield, Conn./Ridgefield Aquatic Club)
Charlie Swanson (Richmond, Va./NOVA of Virginia)