BUDAPEST — As Yogi Berra once famously said, it ain’t over til it’s over, and while the swimming part of these 19th FINA championships is just now half over, and for a great chunk of the world these championships perhaps have an are-they-really-happening vibe, up close there are threads that clearly deserve pulling:
— Caeleb Dressel, the top American guy, went home abruptly. USA Swimming wouldn’t say what’s wrong, citing medical privacy laws.
Let’s deconstruct.
OMAHA, Neb. — Every four (or perchance, five) years, the U.S. Trials, swim and track, make plain one of the inexorable truths of our lives. Time is what we make of it. Destinies are written in hundredths of a second.
At the Trials, there is no getting around this truth.
There is only the making of an easy peace. An understanding that, for a glimmer, one can stretch the boundaries of what might be possible.
This is what Katie Ledecky is — has been since 2012 — doing, and what she affirmed Wednesday in winning both the 200 freestyle and, about an hour later, the 1500 free. Earlier this meet, she won the 400 free. The 800 free awaits.
This, too, is what 31-year-old Allison Schmitt, the 200 free gold medalist in London in 2012, achieved Wednesday night. In a feel-good comeback, she finished just back of Ledecky in the 200 free, earning a fourth trip to the Olympics. If she wins a medal in Tokyo, most likely in the relays, she would join Dara Torres (five) and Jenny Thompson (four) in an exclusive club: medals at four-plus Games. Schmitt already has medals from 2016, 2012 and 2008.
GWANGJU, South Korea — If ever there was an event that suffered from an Olympic hangover, these 18th FINA world aquatics championships would be right up there on the list of leading candidates. Indeed, a longtime FINA official said, these were the championsihps from the twilight zone.
Some 18 months after the hugely successful — and bitterly cold — PyeongChang Olympics over in South Korea’s northeastern mountains, the action shifted to this nation’s southwest, and Gwangju, into the heat and humidity and, as it turned out, virtually non-stop rain. Strike that. These championships went down to the percussive beat of seemingly endless thunderstorms. There was lightning, too, as immediately before the women’s water polo final, won by the United States over Spain.
They tried to sell this event as a peacemaker: “Dive into Peace,” read the white-on-turquoise slogans plastered all over the venues and, indeed, around town, a nod not just to events on the peninsula but, as virtually everyone in South Korea knows, the events of May 1980, when a democracy uprising climaxed in a bloody battle between the military and locals, the victims now honored in an expansive national cemetery near town.
Instead of peace, however, a balcony in a packed nightclub near the athletes village collapsed early on the morning of July 27, killing two Koreans and injuring at least nine athletes, including four American water polo players.
Meanwhile, inside the venues, athletes from Australia and Britain staged medals-stand protests, purportedly over doping matters tied to the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang. Attendance proved spotty at best; it would be charitable to say there were even hundreds of people on some days at the diving events that opened the meet’s 17-day run. Even the internet — and South Korea is known for its robust internet — didn’t work, and why?
It was thus left to Katie Ledecky, on the meet’s next-to-last night, to provide the emotional rescue — the stuff, the inspiration — that, truly, makes Olympic sport different from everything else.
Essentially, Ledecky all but saved these championships.
GWANGJU, South Korea — The American Caeleb Dressel was out like a shot Thursday night and at the turn, the only turn in the men’s 100-meter freestyle, he was so far ahead it was breathtaking.
It’s not supposed to happen like this. By definition, these were the eight best sprinters in the world. These, of course, are the world championships. And Dressel was making this race like it was him and then seven other guys. The only question was whether he was going to break the world record.
Not quite.
Dressel touched in 46.96 seconds, an American record and just five-hundredths behind Brazilian Cesar Cielho’s world mark, set 10 years ago.
BUDAPEST — In the land before time, when there were no cellphones, those of us of a certain generation were sent out of the house by exasperated mothers who didn’t know the first thing about bicycle helmets and, truth be told, didn’t much care. They just wanted us out until it was dark.
So off we went, baseball cards in our spokes. It was a very exciting day when the new edition of certain magazines would show up in the racks at the Ben Franklin five-and-dime store. It was super-exciting when Mad magazine would show up, with stupid Alfred E. Neuman on the cover, grinning, “What, me worry?”
Now that these 2017 FINA world championships are in the history books, can we finally acknowledge Alfred E. Neuman as Team USA’s unofficial spokesdude?
No Michael Phelps, no Ryan Lochte, no Missy Franklin. No worries.
BUDAPEST — Did you know, my 18-year-old daughter said to me over FaceTime, she in California, me here in Budapest at the FINA world swim championships, that Michael Phelps raced a shark?
Did you also know, she went on, that it wasn’t really a real shark? And Michael had a monofin? And Michael went 38.1 seconds and the shark 36.1 seconds? He was close!
So, I said to the darling daughter, now that you have told me everything about Michael and, as it were, the ultimate example of jumping the shark, what can you tell me about what’s going on here? Because, I said, this is a great meet.
To switch animal gears, or something, here was her response: crickets.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the existential dilemma of Olympic sport in 2017.
RIO de JANEIRO — Of all the images from Michael Phelps’ storied career, perhaps none is as visceral — as open and truthfully honest — as the shot from the finish of the men’s 4x100 freestyle relay at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a portrait of Phelps screaming to the heavens in raw, primal, triumphant victory.
This was the race in which Jason Lezak somehow willed his way past France’s Alain Bernard. Lezak was behind when he dove in. He was behind at the turn. He was behind until the very end, when he out-touched Bernard in a moment that instantly became an Olympic classic.
Right there on the deck, Phelps, who had set the Americans to the lead in the first leg, roared. Right behind him, Garrett Weber-Gale, who had pulled the second leg in the relay, fists clenched, leaned back and screamed in jubilation. Both guys were in their star-spangled LZR suits.
This is the red, white and blue moment the U.S. swim team lives for.
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OMAHA — So many clichés: Time waits for no one. To everything there is a season. Don’t be glad it’s over — smile because it happened. Perhaps there is wisdom to be found in all of these aphorisms. But at the U.S. swim Trials, sayings make for little, if any, consolation when the hard truth makes itself plain. When world-class swimmers and even better people, the likes of Matt Grevers, come up just short.
As a general rule, the math at the swim Trials is blunt but eminently fair: first two in any event go to the Games. At the track Trials, it’s top three. Swimming — only two.
Everyone else — thanks but, well, sorry.
Grevers took third in his best event, the men’s 100 backstroke.
As he said Thursday, “There’s no room for me.”
This is also the way it is, and has to be. The Trials are rough that way.
Consider Missy Franklin. Seventh in the women’s 100 back — out. Second in the 200 free — in. Eleventh after Thursday's semis of the 100 free — out, not even in Friday's final.
“My 100’s just — that speed just doesn’t feel like it’s quite there this meet,” Franklin said Thursday evening. “No idea why. It’s super-disappointing but, you know, I really feel like my endurance is there so it gives me a lot of hope for my [200] back,” with prelims in that event getting underway Friday.
Josh Prenot won the men’s 200 breaststroke Thursday evening, in an American-record 2:07.17, the best time in that event in the world in 2016. Earlier in the week, he had finished third in the 100 breast.
“Yeah,” he said after that 200, “I mean this is my last [Trials] race, my last chance to make the team. I didn’t feel like waiting another four years, so the pressure was on.”
Three guys in that 200 breast went 2:08.14 or better — Prenot, Kevin Cordes and Will Licon. Only four guys in the world have gone that fast this year.
Licon, third, missed out by 14-hundredths of a second.
When you win, it's all good. You maybe even earn the right to try stand-up comedy.
Prenot said, “So it’s pretty cool to see the progression,” the uptick in American breaststroking, following that up with an indirect reference to British standout Adam Peaty, “I guess we’re becoming more like England, where we’re pretty good at breaststroking and pretty bad at soccer.”
Lilly King just finished her freshman year at Indiana. She won the women’s 100 breaststroke earlier in the meet and on Thursday put up the fastest time in the 200 breast semifinals. She observed, “It’s sad to see those faces go in so many events — but nice to see new faces come up.”
Absolutely true all around.
Which doesn’t make it any easier for Grevers, or the many people who have come to appreciate him, and others, who for years have been mainstays on the U.S. team but won’t be going to Rio.
Or maybe still will — time will tell.
Tyler Clary won gold in the London in the men’s 200 backstroke. Here, he finished seventh in the 200 free. On Thursday, in the semifinals of the 200 back, he put up the third-best time. The final is Friday.
“At this point,” Clary said Thursday evening, “every swim that I get now I’m treating it like my last swing, because it certainly could be, and swimming has given me a whole different perspective.”
In London four years ago, Grevers won the 100 back.
All in, across the 2012 and 2008 Games, he has six Olympic medals, four gold, two silver.
He has seven long-course world championships medals. Two came at last summer's world championships in Kazan, Russia.
Here on Tuesday, in the 100 back Trials, Ryan Murphy won, in 52.26 seconds. David Plummer took second, two-hundredths behind.
Grevers touched third, in 52.76, a half-second back of Murphy.
In the 100 free, Grevers managed 15th in the semifinals. The top eight go on to the final, which Nathan Adrian, the London 2012 champ, won Thursday in 47.72.
In that 100 free, another great guy, Anthony Ervin, made the team — and this is the caveat to the top-two rule. Top four in certain events make the relays. Time apparently does wait for some people: the 35-year-old Ervin took fourth.
“If we’re not here to inspire the next generation,” Ervin told the crowd at Century Link arena, “I don’t know what we’re doing.”
In the 200 back prelims Thursday morning, Grevers put up the 14th-best time. That qualified him for Thursday night’s semifinals. But recognizing it was hardly his best event, he scratched out. Murphy posted the top semi time, 1:55.04.
Murphy, who turns 21 Saturday, said after the 100 back:
“Well, I mean, my heart goes out to Matt.
"He's a super-nice guy. I have a great relationship with Matt. He was born in Chicago, I was born in Chicago, so I feel like we kinda got that Midwestern-upbringing connection, and he's been someone I've gotten along with really well, and he's definitely been a role model of mine and someone I've looked up to. So it was super-cool to be in the race with him, just as it is any other time.
“You know, it just turned out in my favor tonight."
After Tuesday’s 100 back final, Grevers stuck around Century Link arena to sign autographs. For, like, more than an hour.
He was amazed, he would say in remarks published Thursday at the Washington Post website, at the affection fans had for him, and he for them.
“Feeling the love from these fans … I actually feel more loved than ever, and I’m really high again. It was awesome. They were all so thankful and happy. I don’t know if people feel that much love in one night. And I didn’t even do well. That was pretty awesome, [to] get that sort of feeling even after you think you’re disappointing people.”
No one needs to cry for Matt Grevers.
Just, like the fans here the other night, appreciate him.
Grevers is 31. His wife, Annie, herself a standout American swimmer, is pregnant.
The two became a social media sensation when, in February 2012, he proposed to her at the end of a meet in Missouri — while he was on the medals stand.
Grevers — who has been training for the past several years in Arizona — is from Lake Forest, Illinois, north of Chicago. He is without question the best swimmer to have ever come out of Northwestern. A 2007 graduate, he served as grand marshal of the school’s 2008 Homecoming parade.
There are all kinds of stories about what a class act Grevers is.
Here’s one:
At the 2013 world championships in Barcelona, the U.S. men appeared to have won gold in the 4x100 medley relay. A historical note: the U.S. men have dominated the medley since the 1976 Montreal Games.
But wait.
The Americans would be disqualified when the electronic timer caught Cordes -- the new guy on the relay, with the likes of Grevers, Adrian and Ryan Lochte -- jumping precisely one-hundredth of a second too soon. Cordes was doing the breaststroke leg; he swam just after Grevers, who pulled the backstroke segment.
Yes, it was Cordes who got tagged. But, afterward, it was Grevers who stood up and held himself accountable.
“It’s as much my fault or more than Kevin’s,” he said. “The guy coming in is usually the one responsible.”
Here, Cordes has been a standout in the breaststroke events, winning the 100 breast and taking second in the 200, behind Prenot.
"The sport of swimming is unforgiving," Grevers said Thursday. "There's not too many ways to make a livelihood in swimming unless you're pretty much on the Olympic team."
He also said, "There's always that battle: When do you step away? On top? Where would I feel satisfied? I feel very satisfied. I didn't bomb or anything."
Indeed. As he said in the very next breath: "I got third."
