By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
Anna Moesch‘s breakthrough time of 51.94 in the women’s 100 free at the AP Race International set an American Record and made her the #2 performer in history (at the time).
Aside from setting up the American women for a run at the Australians in the sprint free relay in LA and further cementing Virginia’s dominance in women’s swimming domestically (and globally), this served as a reminder that America’s top female swimmer in an event will not race in America’s most important meet of 2026.
That’s because USA Swimming chose their team for the Pan Pac Championships last year. Not a particularly new tradition, this “prior year” selection was shifted from the pre-Olympic World Championship year to the Pan Pac year.
There is a lot loaded into this methodology. The idea is that not having a selection meet every year gives coaches the ability to have a less-interrupted training block mid-cycle, based on the somewhat antiquated idea that tapering more than once a year (or two years, or quad, or ever) hurts swimmers’ baseline training and thereby performance at the Olympic Games.
Regardless of one’s opinion of that premise (and I think you can probably sense mine), the shift to doing this at Pan Pacs versus the World Championships is an improvement. It kind of further cements the idea that Pan Pacs aren’t that important (and could probably be replaced with something way cooler, if commercial value was of any consideration).
And so for a swimmer like Moesch, who was sent as part of an official U.S. racing squad to the AP International in London, it’s just a matter of her peaking for one really fun, but not globally that important, meet in AP, versus another in Pan Pacs. No harm, no foul, I guess, though there is some Operation Gold implications.
But it also made me want to look back and see where else the U.S. has missed out on a swimmer rising or peaking in a trials-free year that resulted in swimmers missing the “A team” for the year (usually the World Championships, which has a lot more cultural and financial significance).
One thing that was illuminated by this exercise is that the ‘big misses’ were much more prevalent in 2019 than in either 2015 or 2011 (the COVID quad meant there was no year-out selection in 2022 or 2023). There’s not enough data to paint that as a trend, but 2019 was probably enough evidence to make moving the year-out selections off World Championships a no-brainer.
The other observation is that it’s not clear that this ‘no trials’ thing actually makes a difference. The U.S. has often been really bad, as a group, in the pre-Olympic World Championship meets.
These decisions are always a series of tradeoffs. We risk this, but we gain that. And nothing happens in a bubble – there’s no guarantee that a time swum in Santa Clara would be replicated in Gwangju. But ‘whatifism’ is the only real way to evaluate these tradeoffs, so this is what we’re left with.
Below are a few anecdotes about where the misses were. This is not an exhaustive list of everyone who went faster outside of Worlds than they did at Worlds. Instead, it’s a highlights list of the most significant misses where someone’s career maybe could have looked a lot different had they made the team and gotten that big meet experience (another thing that we often hear is important to development of star swimmers).
2019 World Championships
Regan Smith is sort of an interesting case, because the then-17-year-old was on the team, just not in as robust of a way as she could have been. She won the World Championship in the 200 back, and broke the World Record in the 100 back leading off the 400 medley relay. But that was the infamous choice the coaches had to make to put a swimmer who was clearly having an all-timer of a meet on the medley relay in an event that she didn’t qualify for individually, the 100 back. The lore is that this was also a breakout meet for Australia’s Kaylee McKeown, who has since become the dominant women’s backstroke force in individual events, and Smith still doesn’t have a major global gold medal in the 100 back. She almost surely would have won in 2019 – her 57.57 from the relay was more than a second ahead of Kylie Masse‘s gold medal time in the individual event. The one that stands out in my mind the most besides Regan is the story of Maxime Rooney. He showed up at Nationals in August 2019, popped a 50.68 in the 100 fly, and was never close to that time again. He would have won silver at Worlds in 2019 behind Caeleb Dressel. Ironically, he might have been on the 2015 Worlds team as part of the 800 free relay if the team had been chosen that year. Annie Lazor was one of the top two Americans in 2019 in both the 100 and 200 meter breaststrokes – with both swims coming at the Pan American Games. She would have won silver in the 200 breast at Worlds, an event where the Americans won no medals, but was 3rd at Nationals a year prior in 2:24.02 to miss the team. In another medal-less event for the Americans, a young Luca Urlando swam 1:53.84 at a Pro Swim Series meet in 2019 – but wasn’t on the Worlds team. That time would have earned a bronze medal at the World Championships. Will Licon, who was so close to making big teams so many times, swam a lifetime best of 2:07.62 in the 200 breaststroke in 2019 – but not at the World Championships. In yet another race where Team USA scored no medals, Licon’s swim would also not have been enough for a podium, but it would have placed him 6th and as the best American. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – in a race with no American medalists, the men’s 100 back, Shaine Casas‘ 52.72 from US Nationals would have earned him bronze at Worlds. Austin Katz was on a monster trajectory around 2019. He swam 1:55.69 in the 200 back at Pan Pacs in 2018, but because of the weird multi-meet nature of the year out selection process, he wasn’t on the Worlds team. Instead that summer he swam at Nationals, posting a 1:55.72 that would have earned bronze at Worlds behind American Ryan Murphy (the event was not that deep that year), but was left home. A young Bobby Finke in 2019 surely showed the potential, but wasn’t on the World Championship team when he hit a 14:51 in the 1500 free. He was the fastest American that year by almost five seconds. Entering the 2018-2019 season, Kieran Smith was an IM’er with a World Junior Championship medal. That was the season he began his pivot to the middle distance freestyle events that would earn him most of his international accolades. In 2018, he dropped his 200 free time by 3.7 seconds. In 2019, he dropped it by another 1.5 and was faster than either American swam at Worlds (the U.S. had no finalists). 2019 was also Ryan Held‘s big breakout year. He went from 48.65 in 2018 to 47.39 in 2019, which remains his lifetime best in spite of having achieved much more significant finishes later in his career. That time would have cruised to bronze at Worlds. The U.S. didn’t need him to win gold and set a Championship Record in the 400 free relay, however.2015 World Championships
In 2014, Caeleb Dressel was well on his way to being the next great American sprinter. By 2015, he had arrived. He improved his 50 free from 22.36 at Junior Nationals and 22.35 at Nationals in 2014 to 21.53 at Nationals in 2015. That time would have earned him a bronze medal at Worlds, and while his 48.78 in the 100 free wouldn’t have turned as many heads, it would have given coaches one more option for prelims of the disastrous 400 free relay that missed finals by half-a-second with a pair of 49 splits (one flat start and one rolling start). Oh, what could have been. Santo Condorelli began representing Canada internationally in 2015, and finished 4th in the 100 free in 2016, before eventually going on to represent Italy and now the United States in international competition as well. A Bolles School Sharks teammate of Dressel, Condorelli’s best 100 free in 2014 was 49.46 at Nationals. By July 2015, repping Canada at the Pan American Games, he swam 47.98. 2015/2016, when he was 20/21, was the peak of his career in the 100 free, and he was only under 48.5 one other time in his career – in 2021. Kelsi (Worrell) Dahlia was in the middle of her program-rewriting run at Louisville in 2014, but hadn’t really had her big short course breakout yet. That came in March 2015, when she won the NCAA title in 49.81 and set a new American Record. She followed that in the summer by dropping her long course 100 fly to 57.27, which would have given her a bronze medal in an event where the U.S. had no finalist. The fastest American woman in the 100 breaststroke in 2015 was Katie Meili, by over a second. In fact, her 1:05.64 would have won gold at the World Championships. Instead, the U.S. again had no finalists in this race. Natalie Coughlin was already well established by 2015, and was close to the end of her career, with her last major meet being the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials. She made the Pan Am Games team in 2015, not the Worlds team, but went out with one final swing – a massive 59.05 in the 100 back. That would have placed her 5th and as the top American at Worlds that year.2011 World Championships
In 2011, the top four times in the women’s 50 free by Americans were all done outside of the World Championships. Two of them were done by swimmers who were at the World Championships and either didn’t swim that event or were just faster at another meet. The U.S. didn’t sniff a medal in this race regardless. There weren’t really many examples of ‘big misses’ at this meet, though as with the other ones, there were tons of examples of Worlds team members who were faster at other meets that year.Read the full story on SwimSwam: Who Misses Out When the US Selects Their Teams a Year Early?
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