Where Does the U.S. Men’s Medley Relay Go Now? ...Middle East

By Sam Blacker on SwimSwam

2025 U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

The entirety of the U.S. men’s 4×100 medley from the 2024 Olympic final will not be swimming at the U.S National Championships, and subsequently at Worlds, in 2025. This could have a significant ripple effect for the event in Singapore this summer, with the potential for the American men to drop out of the top two. Other than due to a boycott in 1980 and disqualification in 2001, 2007 and 2015, this has never happened at an Olympics or World Championships.

However, the U.S. is not alone in missing some key legs this summer. Great Britain and Australia will be missing their fastest breaststroke legs, Italy is an elite butterflyer short, and France needs a replacement for Florent Manaudou on freestyle.

China brings back the strongest team, but a returning Russia/Neutral Athletes B could take 2nd behind them and leave everyone else fighting it out for bronze.

Backstroke

This is the stroke where the theoretical gap between the absentee and the potential replacement is smallest. Shaine Casas’ best (52.51) is only around half a second slower than Ryan Murphy’s (51.85), but backstroke will be cut-throat this year internationally.

Casas is an excellent swimmer, but even if he’s at his best, there are likely to be at least four men ahead of him: Kliment Kolesnikov, Oliver Morgan, Thomas Ceccon and Xu Jiayu. Add in Yohann Ndoye-Brouard for France and the U.S. may go into the breaststroke leg in sixth place.

Ryan Murphy has made a habit of throwing down a strong opening split on the medley relay, and this year there’s a big difference between a 52.0 and a 52.5. The U.S. will need to hope for a bunched-up field and some tired swimmers elsewhere.

Jack Aikins and Destin Lasco are other possibilities for this leg, but both tend more towards the 200 and have best times in the 100 in the 52-high range. Neither has the drop-dead speed that their potential competitors in the Worlds final have.

Breaststroke

This may look like the weakest leg for the U.S. men, but looks can be deceiving. No one has broken 1:00 so far this season for them although there are three men entered at Trials with a time under that mark, led by Josh Matheny’s 59.23.

Michael Andrew is the National Record holder in 58.14, but has not been under 59 since 2022 and finished eighth at Trials last year. Matheny is likely the best case scenario for this relay and has form,  splitting 58.45 on the prelims mixed medley relay at Worlds in 2023.

Nic Fink, though, has been levels above any other U.S. man over the last three years both in speed and consistency. He has had multiple low-58/high-57 splits, his fastest of 57.86 coming in 2022.

Thankfully for the U.S., men’s breaststroke has taken a hit worldwide this year. Adam Peaty is taking the year off for Great Britain, who will be hoping for a 59-low from either Greg Butler or 17-year-old Max Morgan. Sam Williamson recently suffered a torn patella that will take him out for nine months, although Australia have Joshua Yong to take over from him having split 58.43 in Paris, and Arno Kamminga won’t be in Singapore for the Netherlands.

Italy (Nicolo Martinenghi/Ludovico Viberti), Germany (Lucas Matzerath), the Netherlands (Caspar Corbeau) and China (Qin Haiyang) all have swimmers 59-low or better so far this year, and Leon Marchand will likely be sub-59 on the relay again for France. Kirill Prigoda also split 57.89 for Russia/Neutral Athletes B at their National Championships back in April.

Par for the U.S. here would be a 59-flat. Josh Matheny has the ability to swim that and more, and looks the strongest of the U.S. options this year.

Fly

Dare Rose, Shaine Casas and Thomas Heilman are all sub-51-second swimmers, but not one of them can match the 49.41 Caeleb Dressel swam on this relay in Paris.

The main reason is that almost no one can: Maxime Grousset is the only other active swimmer to have split under 50 seconds off a flying start. The U.S. should still be strong on this leg in Singapore, although Rose is the only one to have excelled in a relay setting.

Heilman split 51.66 in 2023 and 51.19 in Paris last year, despite setting a best of 50.80 at Olympic Trials. Rose was 50.13 in Fukuoka in 2023, and had some phenomenal splits at Short Course Worlds in December.

Casas is yet to make an international team in fly but the stage is set for him to have a breakout Trials – although that may come in backstroke and freestyle rather than fly.

A 50-low is a top-25 split all-time and could hardly be faulted. Rose is the best chance of that, but this should be one of the areas of strength for the U.S. this summer. Canada (Ilya Kharun), Russia/Neutral Athletes B (Andrei Minakov), Australia (Matt Temple), the Netherlands (Nyls Korstanje) and France (Maxime Grousset) will be up there with them, but this is China’s weakest leg and Italy and Great Britain are missing a top-tier flyer.

Free

Pan Zhanle is far and away the top 100 freestyler in the world after Paris. For the U.S. that shouldn’t factor much, as China should have run away with this relay before the final leg, but they should be one of the best in the next tier on this stroke.

Jack Alexy and Chris Guiliano are a fantastic 1-2 punch, and Alexy has split 47.00 before. Guiliano’s best split is nearly half a second off his flat-start best of 47.25, but there should be no worse than a 47-low on the end of this relay.

Kyle Chalmers has made a habit of splitting 46s, but Russia/Neutral Athletes B (Egor Kornev), Britain (Matt Richards) and Canada (Josh Liendo) are the only other nations likely to have a similar split to the U.S. on the end. Britain and Canada have their own problems on other legs, ones that should see them too far back to mount a charge.

Total Add-Up: Projected Line-Ups

This isn’t disastrous. For all the doom and gloom over Team USA’s prospects in this event, they still sit fourth in this ranking, and Italy is not looking in form to challenge the podium this year.

Not only that, but the projected add-up is not far off the Trials winners’ add-up over the last four years.

However, if we do a projected add-up for each of those years, the picture in 2025 does look a little bleaker. The add-up uses the best times pre-Trials of the four swimmers who swam the medley relay final in the summer of each year.

*Michael Andrew replaced Caeleb Dressel on the relay at Worlds in 2022. Using Dressel’s time, the add up would have been 3:27.49.

2023 is the odd year out there – one where two swimmers in Dare Rose and Jack Alexy exploded onto the scene. -Trials add-up would have been 3:28.89 – faster than the 2025 add-up. Compared to the other three, there is a definite drop-off this year and most importantly the projected add-up is certainly an overestimation of the times that will be swum in Indianapolis.

The U.S. men can certainly end up on the podium this year, but it may be an unfamiliar step. Never before have they won bronze, but that may have to be the goal this year.

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