OMAHA, Neb. — Every four (or perchance, five) years, the U.S. Trials, swim and track, make plain one of the inexorable truths of our lives. Time is what we make of it. Destinies are written in hundredths of a second.
At the Trials, there is no getting around this truth.
There is only the making of an easy peace. An understanding that, for a glimmer, one can stretch the boundaries of what might be possible.
This is what Katie Ledecky is — has been since 2012 — doing, and what she affirmed Wednesday in winning both the 200 freestyle and, about an hour later, the 1500 free. Earlier this meet, she won the 400 free. The 800 free awaits.
This, too, is what 31-year-old Allison Schmitt, the 200 free gold medalist in London in 2012, achieved Wednesday night. In a feel-good comeback, she finished just back of Ledecky in the 200 free, earning a fourth trip to the Olympics. If she wins a medal in Tokyo, most likely in the relays, she would join Dara Torres (five) and Jenny Thompson (four) in an exclusive club: medals at four-plus Games. Schmitt already has medals from 2016, 2012 and 2008.
Allison Schmitt at these Olympic Trials // Getty Images
Nathan Adrian in the pool // Getty Images
Time, though, proved a reach too far Wednesday night for Nathan Adrian, one of the great American sprint champions, ever. Trying to mount his own feel-good comeback from testicular cancer, swimming in the first of the two men’s 100 freestyle semifinals, Adrian could only manage sixth place, in 48.92. He ended the night 13th overall, not good enough for top-eight and the finals, to be run Thursday.
Adrian is now 32, married, a new father. “Who would have guessed,” Adrian said afterward, “that 13 years ago,” at the 2008 Trials and then Games, “[when] I was a 19-year-old kid sneaking into the finals and making a relay in Beijing? What an absolute dream come true to compete at the highest level.
“To watch the evolution of American sprinting has been extraordinary.“
That next phase of that evolution:
The Caeleb Dressel Show moved Wednesday into high gear, Dressel winning the second of the two men’s 100 semis, in 47.77, fifth-fastest in the world this year. Zach Apple touched just one-hundredth behind.
Meantime: Alex Walsh is 19, from Nashville. She won the women’s 200 individual medley, in 2:09.30. Kate Douglass is also 19, from Pelham, New York. She finished second, two-hundredths back, 2:09.32. They are University of Virginia teammates.
Now the cruelty of the Trials, and of time: Madisyn Cox, who is 26, from Lubbock, Texas, on her way to medical school, finished third. In 2:09.34.
Two-hundredths of a second out of the Olympic Games.
Four-hundredths separated first from third in the women’s 200 IM.
And in an event that in an entirely different way showed the truth of the march of time:
Since 2000, Michael Phelps has been a mainstay in the men’s 200 butterfly. No more. Zach Harting, 23, of Huntsville, Alabama, won in 1:55.06. Gunnar Bentz, 25, of Georgia’s Dynamo Swim Club, took second, in 1:55.34.
Harting came back to win after being third at the 150-meter mark. He has been known to march out for races in a Batman costume.
Bentz was on the 2016 Rio team. He was at the Rio gas station that infamous night with Ryan Lochte.
Phelps has been poolside in Omaha throughout. Indeed, though he is not competing, he is — as befits the greatest, with 28 Olympic medals, 23 gold — king of all he surveys. So who is to tell Michael Phelps that he can’t go on the pool deck, otherwise forbidden to mere mortals?
Like, no one.
So there, as Schmitt came out of the water, there he was, wrapping her up in a big hug. She had touched second in 1:56.79.
As is well-known in swim circles, Phelps and Schmitt are like brother and sister.
She said, “I don’t even know how to put that into words,” meaning the moment. She had taken almost two years off after the Rio Games; there, she swam only relays.
Referring to Phelps, she added, “He’s been a brother inside the pool and out of it. He’s been along for the ride … since our time in Michigan.” In her career, she said, he had been a “huge part.”
Pause here for an Allison Schmitt fun fact: over the last nine years, she made one world championship team and three Olympic teams. She wore a jacket Wednesday night after competing that declared, ‘Your story isn’t over yet.” Inside the lapel was another inscription — “Long live April” — for a cousin who, she said, committed suicide six years ago.
Schmitt has been outspoken about her import — and, in general, athlete — mental health. At a news conference later, she said, “I’ve heard things saying I’m washed up,” adding, “But to have the support that I’ve had in my close-knit circle who have supported me through it all — II know that I’m not here alone, and without them, I wouldn’t be here so I know that this journey is about all of us together.”
Ledecky won Wednesday’s 200 free in 1:55.11. That marked her second-best time in 2021 and, overall, the fifth-best time in the world this year.
Five years ago, at these Trials, Ledecky won in 1:54.88. She would go on to win the 200 free in Rio in 1:53.73. The race is not rocket science, she said: “It’s a sprint. Go for it.”
About 70 minutes later — with a stop for a post-200 interview on the pool deck for the crowd — Ledecky swam one of her longtime specialties, the 1500. That’s 30 lengths of the pool, back and forth.
The top-10 list reads like this, one to 10: Katie Ledecky. Her world record is 15:20.48.
From lap one, Ledecky took the lead Wednesday night. She knew, the other seven women in the race knew, everyone in the arena knew who was going to win. The only suspense, as it were, was who would finish second and how far behind she would be, and whether Ledecky could drag the runner-up to a prime performance of her own.
Ledecky touched in 15:40.5, a new championship record.
Second: Erica Sullivan, 20, of Las Vegas.
And, yes, Sullivan is now the 13th fastest woman in history in the women’s 1500. She touched in 15:51.18.
Tokyo will mark the first time in Olympic history for the women’s 1500 free. At the Games, the men have been swimming it since, oh, 1908. It has been a world championships regular for men — and women — for many years.
For a bit of context:
At the 2019 worlds in Gwangju, South Korea, with Ledecky ill, Italy’s Simona Quadarella won the women’s 1500 in 15:40.89. This May, at the European championships, Quadarella swam 15:53.59. At the Australian Trials, Maddy Gough went 15:46.13.
“Get back to work if you’re a swimmer. Set those goals for 2024,” Ledecky said with a laugh to the crowd from the deck afterward. Time, you know, keeps marching on.
But first, prelims Friday, finals Saturday — the 800. And then — Tokyo.