Dressel tops 100m fly in 49.87sec

OMAHA • World record holder Caeleb Dressel will try to add the Olympic 100m butterfly gold to his two world titles after a win on Saturday at the United States Olympic swimming trials.

Dressel, who clocked the world record of 49.50sec at the 2019 World Championships in Gwangju, led wire-to-wire on the way to victory in 49.87sec.

That was a shade off his semi-final time of 49.76, but easily enough for victory over Tom Shields, a 2016 Rio Olympics relay gold medallist who was second in 51.19.

Dressel, who won two relay golds in Rio 2016 but finished sixth in the 100m freestyle, has since emerged as a multi-event star, winning a record eight medals, six gold, at the 2019 world meet.

He had already punched his ticket to Tokyo in the 100m free, and later on Saturday topped the semi-final times in the 50m free ahead of Michael Andrew and 2012 100m free gold medallist Nathan Adrian.

"The goal of this meet is making the team," he said. "I would have liked to be a little faster just to put more of a show on for the home crowd. But we made the team and I'm in the final of the 50m. This meet's going as according to plan as it possibly could have."

Katie Ledecky echoed that sentiment after completing her qualifying campaign with another dominant victory in the 800m free, her time of 8min 14.62sec putting her more than five seconds ahead of surprise second-place finisher Katie Grimes. The 15-year-old clocked a career best 8:20.36.

Ledecky owns the world record of 8:04.79 and the top 10 times of all time. But the Olympic five-gold medallist said she was not too concerned about times coming out of the trials in which she qualified in the 200m, 400m, 800m and 1,500m freestyle.

She said: "I think we feel pretty good coming out of this week, mission accomplished. You can't really take that for granted."

There was an upset in the women's 200m backstroke, as Rhyan White and 18-year-old Phoebe Bacon finished one-two in 2:05.73 and 2:06.46 respectively to shut world record holder Regan Smith out of a 200m spot in Tokyo.

Smith, who is already on the team in the 200m fly as well as the 100m back, was third in 2:06.79.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE