Bobby Finke saves century-old streak to close Paris Olympics swimming

PARIS — Much has been said about the waves created by Olympic pool shallower than usual. But on the final night of swimming competition here, the pool created something different — the emotional blow for the Americans.

Bobby Finke’s absolute world record in the 1,500-meter freestyle was a massive clutch swim that kept alive the American streak of at least one individual men’s pool gold medal since 1900. It was followed by a replay, for first time. -U.S. men’s medley relay defeat in Olympic history, dethroned by a Chinese team marred by doping controversies. And then that gave way to a strong, walking world record by the American women’s medley relay.

Fine, as they say in French.

Now the reckoning begins.

The final day was an appropriate mix of results for a wildly uneven, largely disappointing US performance. USA Swimming can point to both gold medal and total medal wins, with eight gold medals and 28 total medals to Australia’s seven gold medals and 18 total medals. After losing the gold medal 13-7 to the Aussies at last year’s World Championships, this is at least a reverse embarrassment. Barely.

But here’s the big picture: Eight golds are the fewest by Americans since 1988, and the total of 28 is the fewest since 2004. And remember, three events and nine medal chances have been added since 2020.

No one expected this to be an easy swimming Olympics for the historically dominant country. But hopes rose after a fast performance at the U.S. Olympic trials in June in Indianapolis, and then the Americans failed to deliver in France.

The times are hard to compare from Indy to now because of the La Défense Arena pool, which produced a lot of slow performance and some erratic results. Place matters more than time in the Olympics anyway, and the U.S. generally hasn’t lived up to its seediness.

In 35 events, American swimmers finished 89 places lower than their pre-meet entry list ranking – an average drop of 2.5 places. The women fared considerably better than the men in this regard, also winning five golds to the men’s two (one was shared in the mixed relay).

A few extreme busts skew the seeding number slightly, when other values ​​make the overall performance seem a little less drastic. For example, five times Americans were ranked to win medals and missed the podium, while three Americans took home hardware that wasn’t expected, according to the rankings.

However, the big picture of underperformance is pretty clear, and sky-high US standards don’t allow much in the way of underperformance. Swimming might be second only to basketball in terms of public demand to dominate the Olympics.

American headliner Caeleb Dressel, who bounced back from a two-event layoff on Friday to swim a very good butterfly leg in the medley relay, spoke two truths that conflict with each other: The standards don’t change in the U.S. and the world gets From behind.

“It wasn’t a bad meet at all,” said Dressel, who has won nine Olympic medals, including eight gold. “The goal when you come to the Olympics and the World Championships is gold medals. There are other countries that are becoming very dominant. The wealth has just been spread. I don’t think we are worse, per se.

“I don’t think the goals need to change because the world is getting faster. I don’t think we start fighting for silver and bronze – not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we want to be the most dominant team. And I went to these games.”

The margins were just smaller. And truth be told, the USA entered the weekend needing to swim very well to salvage something positive from this meet.

That has largely happened. Saturday Katie Ledecky did what she did, winning the 800 free, and then came the medley relay. And on Sunday, Finke and the women’s relay put some heroics around another otherworldly Chinese performance.

By his race, Finke was well aware of this America’s men’s non-gold individual performance. Not one to shy away from what many athletes would call “outside noise,” he said he actually made his way into the comments section of niche website Swimswam.com.

“I love reading this stuff,” Finke said. “It kind of motivates me inside.”

That said, Finke admitted he felt the pressure. After winning both the 800 and 1,500 in Tokyo three years ago, he failed to catch Ireland’s Daniel Wiffen in the shorter of the two races earlier in the week. So he got on the blocks for the 1,500 and went for it.

This is a scary strategy in the longest pool race, one that can come at a high cost. And it’s contrary to Finke’s trademark late-loading style. But with everything on the line, he threw caution aside and attacked from the first shot.

“That wasn’t really my strategy going into the race,” he admitted with a laugh. “I didn’t know how the race would go. I saw that I had a pretty decent lead at 300 so I knew I had to keep going and make the guys hurt a little bit. They started to catch up to me and I got a bit worried so I knew I had to keep pushing.”

It was Wiffen and, more pertinently, Italy’s Gregorio Paltrinieri, who tried to catch Finke. While his lead was getting smaller, his pace ahead of the world record time was getting bigger. The crowd got behind Finke’s record-breaking chase in the closing stages.

But Finke was only concerned with finishing first, trying to complete the transformation from dead close to favorite.

I can’t give it up now, he thought to himself. “I can’t be the guy who got knocked down after doing all the running.”

Instead, he ran away, hitting the final 50 in trademark Finke fashion to break China’s Sun Yang’s 12-year-old world record. In China’s mole game and drug testing, the removal of the controversial Sun from the record books – he was suspended for drugs and involved in testing brouhahas – was followed minutes later by that country winning the men’s mixed.

The race unfolded as a tense drama between the Chinese, Americans and French, to the roaring delight of the fans.

The Americans went with the quartet of Ryan Murphy, Nic Fink, Caeleb Dressel and Hunter Armstrong and it almost paid off. Murphy and Fink had good opening laps, but not as fast as Saturday at the front of the mixed mix – they were 1.04 seconds slower, which loomed large in a race decided by .55 seconds .

Dressel had a monster fly leg, clocking a 49.41, but that didn’t provide enough of a cushion for Armstrong to take on China’s Pan Zhanle, who broke his own world record in the 100 free earlier in the meet. in a raised eyebrow 46.40 seconds. Pan followed that up with what might be the fastest relay split in human history, dropping a 45.92 to win the race – .14 faster than Jason Lezak’s immortal 100 free split for the USA at the Olympics in 2008, which kept Michael Phelps for eight. gold medals in life.

Given China’s drug history, this was not an overwhelmingly popular outcome. Twenty-three swimmers tested positive for Trimetazidine in 2021, which was revealed in the spring, and there have been revelations about other positive tests that were kept secret and did not result in penalties. Eleven Chinese Olympic swimmers were among those who tested positive in ’21, and two of the 11 were on the winning relay.

Pan, it should be noted, was not one of them. But his times were a source of great discussion. Without sounding accusatory at all, Dressel said Pan’s 100 freestyle world record swim here was one of two in modern times that made her “jaw-dropping,” the other being the 2020 100 breast world record of Adam Peaty.

The question was asked of the American relay about the loss to China, and Fink stepped in to answer for Dressel. He was answering about the shortcomings of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in general, not China.

“There are questions about the system,” Fink said. “Is WADA doing everything it can? We want more clarity and transparency in all these things. Nothing against the athletes competing, just questions about the system. There seems to be cycle after cycle of concerns and questions.”

Following that race, the U.S. women finished an overall positive meet with a thunderous relay. Back Regan Smith, breaststroker Lilly King, butterfly Gretchen Walsh and freestyler Torri Huske made sure it wasn’t close, with King opening it up and the lead growing from there.

It was a nice graduation moment for King, who is in the last of her three Olympics. The other three figures will be the pillars of the American team until 2028.

The present and the future from the women’s side are bright. The men’s side should improve after being caught in a bit of a generation gap in 2024 – a youth movement is coming, some of whom have gained valuable Olympic experience here.

“These guys kind of have a taste for it now, they’re definitely going to be looking for gold,” Fink said. “We’re excited for them.”

For now, though, USA Swimming is coming out of Paris with a mixed bag of results that haven’t been up to the traditional standard. There will be changes in the future, because a mixed bag won’t cut it at a home Olympics in 2028.