- Slug: Sports-Swimming Olympians, 700
- Photo available (thumbnail, caption below)
By MARK HARRIS
Cronkite News
TEMPE — Olympic-type competition will take place in a college setting Friday.
When the Arizona State Sun Devils host the Stanford Cardinal, both teams will include several Olympians.
The Sun Devils men’s and women’s teams are coached by USA Olympic Swimming head coach Bob Bowman, and the Stanford Cardinal have multiple Olympic swimmers on their roster, most notably medalists Lia Neal, Simone Manuel and Katie Ledecky.
Arizona State adds three more Olympic swimmers to the meet, although none of them swam for the USA in last summer’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Kat Simonovic competed for Serbia, while Richard Bohus and Anna Olasz swam for Hungary.
Out of all these Olympic swimmers, Ledecky stands out. In her historic run at the 2016 Olympics, Ledecky won four gold medals and set world records in the 400 freestyle and the 800 freestyle.
Because Bowman coached the U.S. men’s team, he did not directly coach Ledecky in the Rio Olympics. But he knows she is special.
“I’ve been around Katie a long time, ever since 2012,” Bowman said. “I know her fairly well, and it’s been kind of fun to see her develop.
“What you find when you talk with Katie or if you spend any time with her, she’s just a very down-to-earth, easy-going person. Not so much in the water; she’s kind of on another planet. She’s very grounded, she has very clear goals, she has a very clear path that she wants to take with her career and her education. And she’s a very special athlete.”
Bowman believes one reason Ledecky is so successful is her work ethic.
“She just trains on another level. She trains on a level higher than most men, that’s it,” Bowman said.
As talented as Ledecky is, she’s not the only gold medalist on Stanford.
Junior Simone Manuel won golds in Rio in the 100 freestyle and the 4×100 relay.
Even though Bowman’s Sun Devils will be competing against Manuel, he seemed enthusiastic to see her swim again.
“Simone Manuel is an Olympic gold medalist in the 100 free, that’s about as good as it gets,” Bowman said. “She’s very serious about it, she has really improved quite a bit at Stanford, they’ve done a great job with her, and I’m excited to see what she does here and where she goes in the summer.”
Manuel is the first African-American woman to win a gold in swimming.
With the Stanford women’s team loaded with Olympians, it’s no surprise that the Cardinal are second-ranked in the NCAA, behind Texas.
And since the ASU women’s team is unranked, it does not appear winning is the main emphasis for the Sun Devils on Friday.
“The strategy for us is to see how we compare, to swim as well as we can swim on Friday and then kind of just see where we are in relationship to those guys,” Bowman said. “Obviously, the women’s team at Stanford is the best team there is, and it’s unrealistic to think that where we are today we’re just going to go toe-to-toe with those ladies.
“I think it’s a good yardstick for us, to see how we’re improving.”
Alysha Bush, a senior freestyle swimmer on ASU, says that the Sun Devils’ preparation won’t change, even though they face tough odds.
“I don’t think it’s very different,” Bush said. “I think we go into meets that we know we are going to win with a little bit more swagger and confidence. With these kind of meets, we also know we are going up against the best swimmers in the world. So it’s kind of like a learning tool for us.”
While the ASU women have a big challenge, the men’s team thinks they have an outside shot of defeating No. 8 Stanford. The Sun Devils are No. 12.
ASU junior Patrick Park said that Stanford is “stacked,” but he believes that the Sun Devils have a chance.
“It’s all going to come down to the finish,” Park said. “I think for all the races we are going to be right there with them. It’s just the matter of who gets first, second, or third.”
