After winning five gold medals in Tokyo, the swimmer nearly walked away from the sport; now he’s back at U.S. Olympic trials as a remade mystery.
INDIANAPOLIS — At his best, as during the Tokyo Olympics three summers ago, Caeleb Dressel is the world’s fastest human in water — a record-setting sprinter and gold medal machine who serves as Team USA’s firewall against any would-be challenger for global supremacy in swimming. At his best, he is the captivating, full-sleeve-tattooed darling of NBC’s pre-Games promotion and a swim-deck presence that demands the attention of every camera and eyeball in the building.
The unknown quality of Dressel’s current abilities — and the juxtaposition of his towering, five gold medal performance from Tokyo in 2021 against his total absence from last summer’s world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, where Australia punctured Team USA’s historic world dominance by winning 13 gold medals to the Americans’ seven — will make him the most compelling figure in the pool in Indianapolis.
Multi-stroke star Kate Douglass, who won seven golds at the 2023 NCAA championships for the University of Virginia, could swim as many as five events in Indianapolis and will be the top seed in the 100-meter freestyle, the 200-meter breaststroke and the 200-meter individual medley. In Paris, she could duel with Canada’s Summer McIntosh for the title of the world’s best all-around female swimmer.
“We want to win the most medals possible, and we want to win the gold medal count,” said Tim Hinchey, USA Swimming’s CEO. “That’s something that’s always our objective, every time we get out athletes in front of a global audience.” “There were a lot more things at stake than a swim career; I’ll put it that way,” he told the SwimSwam podcast on the website of the same name. After withdrawing in the middle of the Budapest meet, he said, he immediately poured himself into counseling near the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, Fla., where he trains. “Five hours a week,” he said. “Swimming was in the picture. I couldn’t go near a pool. I purposely took the long way around campus to avoid the pool.
“Seeing where he was last summer at trials to now? It’s night and day,” Nesty said. “He weathered the storm.”Ledecky, the American freestyle legend and Dressel’s Florida teammate, added: “It wasn’t a marked difference when he came back — like, ‘Whoa, he’s so much happier.’ He’s always carried that sense of joy. But I would say after he came back, he’s just been on fire — happy and healthy and positive and just a real light on the pool deck.
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