Stanford stars make race look like training session
Ledecky, Manuel breeze in 200 free preliminary round
SANTA CLARA >> It looked like another day at the Stanford pool.
Olympic star Katie Ledecky felt that way describing the Santa Clara international competition Friday morning as feeling like a summer league meet.
But when Ledecky reached the wall first and Manuel came charging through the aquiline water just behind her, the Olympic swim stars weren’t in training Friday morning.
They were dominating a preliminary round of the 200-meter freestyle at the TYR Pro Series at Santa Clara that runs through Sunday.
The Stanford teammates kicked off the summer longcourse season at the George F. Haines International Swim Center as they reach the crucial midway point in the four-year Olympic cycle.
“We have two years until trials so it is important to get foundational training in,” said Ledecky, who last month smashed her world record in the 1,500 freestyle.
Ledecky won the 200 freestyle Friday night in 1:55.82 — a little more than 2 seconds over runner up Leah Smith.
Along with fellow Olympian Lia Neal, Ledecky and Manuel are training under coach Greg Meehan although no longer part of the Stanford program.
Call them Team LMN as they stroke their way through the weekend meet.
The swimmers stayed in the Bay Area after collegiate careers with visions of winning more medals at the Tokyo Games in 2020. Ledecky became a professional swimmer after the NCAA championships in the spring with two years of college eligibility left. Manuel
finished her college career in the spring and is scheduled to graduate next weekend with Neal.
But in what has become a national trend, the Olympians have remained with their college coach to prepare for the next Summer Olympics. Without a central facility Americans congregate in a handful of pro programs after college.
Meehan’s success in the seven years since taking over the Stanford women’s team has made it easier for the stars to stay put. Neal, 23, was the first to turn professional after the 2017 college season.
“It was sort of lonely,” she recalled. “You are sort of isolated.”
She has welcomed Ledecky and Manuel, who joined her in April. Stanford won’t become a bona fide hub for women swimmers because Meehan plans to keep the focus on the Cardinal.
“As you move through a ‘quad’ naturally the group gets bigger,” he said, adding the pro group could double in size by the Tokyo Games.
Some of the other “postgraduate” programs are located at Cal, Arizona State, the University of Texas, University of Florida and Charlotte, North Carolina. Berkeley’s Teri McKeever and Meehan say a diversity of coaching styles is the strength of U.S. swimming.
“It’s where the sport has evolved,” McKeever said Friday. “There are a lot more philosophies in the pool.”
Ledecky, a five-time Olympic gold medalist, has carefully crafted her path to a professional career after many discussions with Meehan. After leading the Cardinal at the NCAA championships as a freshman she and her coach decided it made sense to compete for Stanford just one more season.
Although they made the decision before school started in the fall, Ledecky waited to announce her decision because she didn’t want to become a distraction as the Cardinal won its second consecutive national title. Now she has a solid base of long-course training heading into a summer that will include the U.S. championships, July 25-29, in Irvine and the Pan-Pacific meet in August in Tokyo. The meets will serve as qualifiers for the 2019 World Championships in South Korea.
Ledecky, 21, already has had to scramble her goals after breaking her world record by 5 seconds.
“It felt like it may have been a best time but not by that much,” said Ledecky, who announced Friday she signed a contract with swim apparel company TYR.
The time of 15 minutes 40.28 seconds has forced Ledecky and Meehan to reevaluate how the next two years should unfold.
“At some point, it is almost better to not put out a time because I don’t want to limit myself,” Ledecky said. But “having those targets are beneficial for me.”
They also help Cardinal distance swimmers Leah Stevens and Megan Byrnes who have trained the past two years alongside a fourtime swimmer of the year. The teammates say training with Ledecky has made them better.
“If no one knew who they were and you walked into a practice you couldn’t say, ‘Those are the Olympians, those are the non-Olympians,’” Byrnes said.