Day 6 Prelims Live Recap

2024 U.S. OLYMPIC TRIALS

Day 6 of 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials starts with another quick prelims session. There are just three events on the schedule for this morning: the women’s 200 backstroke, men’s 50 freestyle, and men’s 200 IM.

But that’s not all that’s on tap. After the preliminaries of these three events happen, Catie DeLoof and Erika Connolly (neé Brown) will swim-off for the sixth and final relay spot available for the women’s 4×100 freestyle relay in Paris.

In the 200 backstroke, the sole women’s event of the session, Regan Smith will set herself up to take on the 200 fly final/200 backstroke semifinal dirty double tonight.

Smith is on fire this week and has been impressive even in her morning swims, but likely won’t do more than she has to this morning. Like the women’s 100 backstroke, this is a stacked race and both Phoebe Bacon and Rhyan White–the women who beat Smith in this event in 2021–are back in the field. In particular, Bacon had an under the radar strong 100 back swim, so she could be building towards something special here. The same goes for Kennedy Noble, who’s 100 back exploits were much more noticeable as she swam a 58, but the 200 backstroke is really where she shines.

Then it’ll be time for the men’s splash and dash. All four members of the newly named 4×100 freestyle relay for Paris will be in the field aiming to add another event to their roster. After such big swims in the 100/200 freestyle, Chris Guiliano could move up from his 10th place seed. Caeleb Dressel is in search of an individual Olympic berth and Jack Alexy will aim to back up his 2023 Worlds silver medal later in the rounds.

The last prelim event of the session is the men’s 200 IM. Newly named Olympian Carson Foster will begin his quest to sweep the medleys after claiming the 400 IM on night 2. Michael Andrew, a Tokyo Olympian in this event, has scratched out but there are plenty more challengers for Foster to keep an eye on. Shaine Casas comes in as the top seed and you never know what he’s got in store. Chase Kalisz will want to join Foster in the IM double up, while swimmers like Destin Lasco, Maximus Williamson, and Trenton Julian are all still hoping to book a ticket to Paris.