The SwimSwam Podcast

Jack Kelly has been making waves in the pool since graduating from Brown University last year. The 3x NCAA finalist in the breaststroke events decided he would give pro swimming a go and moved to Austin to train with Bob Bowman. Since making the move, Kelly has progressed immensely, not only going best times in all 3 breaststroke distances, but showing a ton of consistency throughout the last year. He broke the 1:00 barrier for the first time in December, but has since dipped under it on 6 different occasions. He's also been under the 27-second barrier in the 50 breast twice and the 2:10 barrier once in the 200. He's qualified to swim all 3 events at the European championships in August. Kelly discusses what it's been like training with Bowman, racing in the Ivy League, and being a lifelong New York Knicks fan.

Olympic gold medalist Hunter Armstrong left the inaugural Enhanced Games with $375,000 in prize money after two podium finishes, but the bigger story may be what happened before, during, and after the meet. Armstrong, who competed as a clean, non-enhanced athlete, won the men’s 50 backstroke in 24.21 while racing in a polyurethane “super suit.” The swim earned him $250,000, though it was about half a second off his American record of 23.71. He returned in the 100 freestyle, finishing 2nd in 48.0 behind Kristian Gkolomeev, who won in 46.6. Armstrong’s lifetime best is 47.59. The runner-up finish added another $125,000, bringing Armstrong’s total Enhanced Games payday to $375,000.

NCAA Champion Anna Moesch turned heads last weekend when, at the AP Swim International, she clocked a 51.94 100 Freestyle. This was not only a new American record, but it was the first time a woman had dipped under the 52-second barrier since the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (in 2021) when Emma McKeon won gold in 51.96. This made Moesch the #2 performer all-time in the event at the time, a position she has since ceded to Marrit Steenbergen, who went 51.86 just days later in Canet, France. Moesch came on the SwimSwam Podcast and revealed what her last year has looked like. Last summer, Moesch missed qualifying for the US National team by one place and subsequently told her coach, Todd DeSorbo, that she never wanted that to happen again. Moesch has been putting a much bigger emphasis on threshold and middle distance training this year, even going into longer IM groups once or twice per week, in favor of just focusing on sprint training. This appears to have shown up in the back half of her races, specifically in her 51.9 100 free, where she came home in 26.7.

Today on the SwimSwam Breakdown, we discuss Marrit Steenbergen and other star athletes from Canet and Barcelona, the IOC president saying she doesn't believe in paying athletes, and Caeleb Dressel training with Virginia.

In this GMM takeover of the SwimSwam Podcast we have Vern Gambetta, founder of GAIN (the Gambetta Athletic Improvement Network) and Chris Webb, Director of GAINswim. Vern Gambetta is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of functional sports training, a movement that helped shift athletic development away from isolated machine-based strength work and toward training the whole athlete.