This is a new wave coming, I warn you.
Kim Wilde sang the apparently carefree lifestyle of “American kids” on the other side of the Atlantic in 1981, all shopping malls, milkshakes and car movies, but the lyrics are also applicable to American swimmers who travel across the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo participates in these Olympics.
When an American team is ready to attack the Olympic Games without anyone Michael Phelps For the first time since 1996, it has 11 young people in its ranks. Although swimming, like gymnastics, usually produces more young champions than boxing or rowing, this is still a staggering number and one of the toughest Olympics list since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Some people, despite their young age, are mature enough-19-year-old Regan Smith is the 17-year-old 200-meter backstroke world record holder and world champion-but if there is a group of beneficiaries of the pandemic delay, That’s it. Lydia Jacobi is the first Alaskan swimmer to qualify for the Olympic Games. She plans to travel to Tokyo as a fan with her family in 2020, but the delay has forced her to rethink and upgrade. The 16-year-old Bella West Ms entered the trials. Ranked 39th in the national freestyle swimming over 200 meters, but she became a relay team in her swimming career when she was young.
For Jack Mitchell-the only male in Teen XI-even an extra year is hardly enough. The 19-year-old was runner-up in the 400-meter freestyle trial, but did not meet the qualifying criteria, but after 48 hours received an extra opportunity for a specially approved single time trial.
The youngest among them is 15-year-old Katie Grams. She is the youngest swimmer in the United States. In fact, since Katie Ledkey Do this at the same age in London in 2012. Happily, Grimes will swim with Lederkey in the 800m freestyle in Tokyo, finishing second in the trial, second only to the five-time Olympic champion. “You are the future,” Ledkey told Grimes after a preliminary match earlier this week. A few days later, when they celebrated the qualification together, it was: “You are now.”
“I used to think it was cool that we had the same name,” Grimes said afterwards. “Now we are teaming up!”
Claire Curzan just turned 16 last month, and on the same birthday as Phelps, she found this paradigm shift to be equally difficult to understand, because for the first time she was in a virtual WhatsApp group chat. Joined her new teammate. “You see names like Katie Ledecky, Simone Manuel, Lilly King, texting your phone, and you are like:’What the hell is going on?!'”
Ledki knows better than anyone the pressure and joy of transforming amazing talents into Olympic trials so quickly, and expressed the need for more experienced athletes from the team to create a family environment around young peers, their practicality Families cannot accompany them. For some people, this is the first time traveling abroad.
This is a very suitable role for Ledkey. As a fourth-grade student at Stoneridge School in Maryland, the future great man has been paired up in a “buddy” program, as a mentor to a kindergartener named Phoebe Bacon, he—you guessed it. I’m now 19 years old, another teenager in school. team.
There is no doubt that these children are under pressure. The U.S. Swimming Team is an institution, synonymous with burly college prestige, fascinating swagger and gold. Since 1960, it has won at least 8 gold medals in each Olympic Games, and its total number of gold medals is 246, which is not far from half of the Olympic swimming gold medals. There is only one team (U.S Track and field) to win more gold medals in individual sports.Only four countries have won more Olympic titles In total. Representing the Stars and Stripes in the Olympic swimming pool is like playing football for Brazil in the World Cup. Expectations abound.
Once again, this crop has passed a huge test and passed a trial process that often triggers more in-depth competitions than the Olympics itself. Emma Weyant, 19, defeated three former Olympians and qualified for 400 million individual medleys. The 18-year-old Torri Huske didn’t care so much that before breaking the 100-meter flight record in the United States, she folded paper for half an hour in the call room to book a spot on the plane to Tokyo.
Now that she and the other children in the United States have landed in Japan, they are ready to welcome the world.
