Wait a minute. where the heck is Schubert coaching? Didn't he take a leave of absence from his position as National Team coach or whatever his exact position was?
This would be way cool. If you watch events like the women's marathon in running (admittedly much longer) you see a fair number of women in their mid to late 30s. If someone was going to make a comeback, I would think distance swimmers would have an easier time than sprinters since muscle mass is less a determinant of success in the d-events than sprint events.
Wait a minute. where the heck is Schubert coaching? Didn't he take a leave of absence from his position as National Team coach or whatever his exact position was?
Yeah, he did. Wonder if that is the reason why.
This would be so cool. You always see sprinters/stroke specialists in their late 30s/40s making back to the elite levels. She would be the first distance swimmer(?) to make it back to the elite levels.
Interesting, wonder if she's really making a comeback.
I wish her well if she does.
When Dara made her come back she started in masters kind of under the radar, no big announcements to the press. She swam pretty fast in 2006 worlds at stanford on a 4 x 50 relay, think she was 25.8, on not much training. Then she swam with a masters group during and after her pregnancy, she swam in a scy masters meet in April 2007 & went 50 fr 21.9 & 100 fr 48 low. Shortly after that she announced that she was training for 2008 trials and hoped to make the US team for Bejing.
When I told one elite female freestyler about Dara's announcement, this swimmer said
"Well she's not taking my spot."
Dara developed the ability. She was the real deal.
Spitz' 1992 comeback was more hype with not enough ability, he was just out of training for too long.
I wish Janet the best, she was truly great & I'm curious to see what hard training will do for her. I'm also curious how much training she's done during her retirement.
To my knowledge, Wally was the oldest swimmer to swim in Trials when he swam in 2000 (he was 37). I think Rowdy may have qualified when he was older than 37, but didn't actually swim in the meet. So you have to be careful using the phrases, "oldest to qualify" vs "oldest to swim." In 2008 Susan became the oldest male or female to swim in Trials. Vlad Pyshnenko also swam in 2008 Trials and was older than 37, so he moved up to become the oldest male to swim in Trials.
I don't have a recollection like Skip, so this may not be accurate. Hopefully somebody can correct me if I am wrong.
Jeff
Jeff:
You are correct on all points. Wally Dicks back in 2000 was 37 when he swam a 1:05.00 to make the Olympic Trials standard and at that time he was the oldest swimmer to achieve that. Since then Susan Von der Lippe and Dara Torres both were older in making the OT standards. Rowdy Gaines did qualify at age 37, in 1996 but decided not to swim them. He also qualified in 1992 at 33, but had that terrible Guillaine-Bare Syndrome and could not swim them. He would have been the oldest to swim at that time if he was able to swim. Dennis Baker, at the age of 46, in 2008 swam a 2:04.25 in the 200 meter fly and missed making the trials standard at 2:03.99 by .26 and if he made it he would have been the oldest. SVL at the age of 43 is still the oldest.
I have not seen a major press release about this comeback and went to the official Janet Evans website and it says nothing about this. I would think this would be a major news story for both Janet Evans and Mark Schubert with his current leave of absence from USA Swimming. So right now we can treat it as a rumor and just speculate about what is going to happen.
In thinking about all of the comments so far, I thought about this one. There has never been anyone that I can think of at the age of 33 or older that has ever been ranked in a distance event on the world class level. In Masters swimming, you see times of both men and women in sprints that can make OT standards and have a chance to make top 16 at the meet but never in an event 400 or over.
Another fact to look at is the records in Masters swimming for both USMS and FINA World Records. The times of swimmers in the younger age groups in the 50's and 100's make and sometimes qualify for Top 16 in the nation. You never see that and its not even close in distance events like the 400 IM, 400 Free, 800 Free, and 1500 Free.
With these two points, its going to be very difficult to qualify, final, make the Olympic team, and medal at the 2012 Olympics. I realize that we are not just talking about any swimmer and Janet Evans was ahead of her time and the greatest distance swimmer we have seen but that was 20 years ago. In fact it was over 20 years ago because that is where the 4:03.85, 8:16.22, and the 15:52.10 times were swam and at almost age 42 this might be asking a lot.
As Ande mentioned, Dara got into this very slowly and the seeds were planted as far back as the 2006 Nationals at Coral Springs when in less than a month after having a baby, she was swimming in the meet. At the 2006 Worlds in the 200 Mixed Free Relay she lead off the relay in :25.98 and at that time was very close to what the top American swimmers were doing and she had not announced the comeback. I remember seeing that relay and watching Dara swim stroke for stroke with Trip Hedrick and seeing Rich Abrahams hold off a charge from Rowdy Gaines.
Janet Evans has been out of swimming for 14 years and would have to be ready in less than 2 years. Unlike Dara, where she was competitive with the top sprinters from the get go, we don't know how Evans would do with today's top distance swimmers. The current crop of distance swimmers are the best they have been in years. On the national level you have Hoff, Zeigler, Sutton, Schmidt, Burckle, Knutson, and any unkown future stars that always come out of the workwork. On the world level you have Pellegrini, Adlington, Jackson, Goldman, Gorman, Friis, and Etienne and each of these swimmers are going times as fast or faster than what Evans did 20 years ago.
One of Janet Evans strengths was the incredible huge training base that she built up over the years and it would be asking a lot at her age to duplicate that work load. The older swimmers of today do not attempt the workouts they did in there younger years because they just can't recover like they did. After all that time off, I don't know if its possible both mentally and physically to do this.
I think we have to see how this develops and if she is successful it would be as much or more ground breaking than what Dara Torres has done.
Skip,
I loved your post ... extremely insightful and I get your points. What puzzles me about training loads, though, is why / how you see "older" people in events like the marathon succeed on a world-class level and yet, as you rightly point out, we see a greater divergence in swimming distance events as age progresses. As someone who trained high volumes in the 80s, I know it's hard mentally to keep that level up and I choose not to do that today in my Masters career. But, is the reason mental or physical? For me, I think it's mental: I just don't want to train like that ... but I'm not close to contemplating making a trials cut. My hypothesis is that, were I willing to train like I did in the 80s, I could approach my old 400 to 1500M times.
If Janet's got the mental fortitude and time to train and if we see other older athletes in other endurance events, why can't she re-approach her peak performance in swimming?
The article states that she may set goals in her same old events...just the idea is heroic. Crushing training sets of distance free...20 x 400 descends. 800 builds...in your 40s!?
Grit...thy name is Janet Evans!!! I love this chic!!!!
