Americans will be well represented in swimming finals
RIO DE JANEIRO — Coming off an U.S. Olympic trials where times were down across the board, the American swim team was encouraged by its performance during the preliminaries on Saturday, mostly because everybody who got in the pool was faster.
“I’ve never been that fast for prelims, never been that good in the first race of a meet,” said Maya DiRado, who qualified third for the 400-meter individual medley in a time of 4 minutes, 33.50 seconds. “I was watching people crush it all morning, so I was glad to carry that on.”
DiRado, along with Elizabeth Beisel, will represent the U.S. team in the 400 IM finals tonight. Though it will be difficult to beat Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu, who nearly broke the world record in her preliminary at 4:28.58, it was an encouraging performance for both the American men and women.
On the men’s side, Conor Dwyer qualified first in the 400 freestyle, Chase Kalisz had the fastest time in the 400 IM. For the women, Dana Vollmer and Kelsi Worrell took two of the top four spots in the 100 butterfly.
“I’m so happy to make the final, and hopefully I’ll be faster tonight. I’m already faster than the trials,” Beisel said. “We’re all doing better than trials, and that’s a great indicator of how the rest of the meet is going to go.”
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