Austin Grand Prix

The RallySport Aquatics crew was down in Austin this past weekend at the Austin grand Prix meet. The Grand Prix series is a great way for up and coming swimmers to mix it up with the best in the world. Plus, I love Austin, so any chance to get down there I will take.

It was an interesting meet. Being that it was only a month out of World Championships in Dubai, many of the top swimmers were unshaved and in the midst of very hard training. Full beards and drag suits were the norm for many of the male swimmers and many of the best women were in training suits as well. In fact, at one point I heard Phelps talking about how he loafed his morning swim in hopes of missing finals in the 2oo free. No luck, he was 16th. The nice thing about Austin GP is they bring back 5 heats for finals giving people a great chance for multiple swims.

RACE had a good meet. Best times at this point in the season and at the first long course meet in 5 months were not expected, but we still had them from some people. However, the best part of the meet was what we learned while we were there. Kourtney was 5th in the 100 and 6th in the 200 breast and was on TV for both of those finals swims. However, the learning was the key. She stepped up in the 200 breast final and went faster and swam smarter than she did in the morning. She adjusted to the high pressure situation and used it. We also learned how much work the turns need. Rin started to listen. It is so hard as a swimmer to turn off your emotional brain and just follow the plan. Rin started to do that this weekend and with a little help from Greg Troy (Ryan Lotche's coach) I don't see him straying from the path much these days. The same was true for Hannah, whose swims improved all weekend.

Missy Franklin was again the star. She won 5 out of 6 events and showed why she will be the greatest female swimmer on the US team in 2012. She has physical gifts, but it is her emotional ones that make her who she is. She has fun, all the time. She also takes what her coach (Todd Schmitz) asks her to do and works on it daily. Missy's best time in the 100 back coming into Austin was 1:00.3 and the glaring weakness was the first 15m. After watching worlds on TV, Todd sat her down and showed her the focus and improvement that was needed in the first 15m. Missy bought in totally. I was standing next to Todd during her 100 back and commented to him as she broke out that her breakout was the best I had ever seen. His response was that it was her fastest by .5 sec. She finished the race at 57.75, almost exactly .5 faster than she has ever been. The speed is in the details.

One final observation on swimming and on life in general. If you want to be truly great at what you do, stop talking and listen. You know what you know, you don't need to say it out loud and the things you don't know, someone else may. Great coaches, athletes and people spend their time listening, not talking. In the words of Chris Rock "don't talk, talk...listen, listen"

As a side note, Huge props to Max Philips, who cranked his first ever 1000 this weekend to finish just 3 seconds off his first Sectional cut. Other stand out performances this weekend in Loveland were shown by the Davis brothers and Rei Isobe. Rei's total time drops for the weekend were in the minutes, not seconds.