By: Benjamin  He

In case you haven’t noticed, the Olympics in Paris are happening this year. Through 15-23rd of June, the swim trials have since then occurred and the US Olympic swim team has been outfitted and is ready to go. In this article, we’ll be hitting the two main highlights.

Let’s go over two of our star swimmers: 27-year-old Katie Ledecky and Caeleb Dressels.

Ledecky has been known as being currently the fastest distance swimmer in the world for a decade. In the trials, she won the 800-meter freestyle final, the 1,500-meter freestyle, the 400 meter-freestyle, and the 200-meter freestyle. Although she still has a plethora of wins, Ledecky hasn’t broken any of her own world records and she didn’t seem particularly thrilled with any of her own performances at this meet, as her personal standard is still higher than some of these results.

The most interesting race must be her 400 freestyle, mostly because this time, Ledecky won’t be the favorite to win the event. This time that title will belong to Ariarne Titmus from Australia, who currently holds the world record in the event. Summer McIntosh, from Canada, would potentially also be considered a threat in the 400.

Let’s break down Caeleb Dressels. Dressels, a seven-time Olympic gold-medalist, won both the 100-butterfly and the 50-meter-freestyle in the trials. Aside from his achievements, Dressels himself actually took an eight-month break from swimming from mid-2022 to early 2023, which was described as a mental health matter by his coach. At the 2023 world championships, Dressels failed to qualify. But now Dressels is back in the game, this time as a father.

“It takes a lot of work, and there’s parts of this meet that I’ve had some very low lows,” Dressels told WTHR.