Could be a classic race in Paris, as Dressel is on the back end of his career, whereas Liendo still hasn’t peaked. I don’t know enough about Liendo’s underwaters, but SCY and SCM has now become a course where the majority of the swimming is underwater.

Milak seems to be the most talented fly swimmer out there, but took last year off from competition, so difficult to know what he will do.

PS Canada definitely “punching above their weight” in swimming and could have a very good Olympics.

I watched liendo's 100y fly from NCAAs. I have no idea what his underwaters were relative to the Dressel record, but on the second 50 that has two walls vs the first 50 that has one dive and one wall, Dressel was faster than Josh. From what I see Josh kind of coasted into the wall at the end but I don't know what Dressel was doing.

Also while Canada can get some credit for Josh, he became a swimmer in Trinidad (he was born in Canada, and his family was in Trinidad from age 1-10, then back to Canada). I think Josh acknowledges that's where he became a swimmer. In Canada we lifted his game and now Nesty and crew will take it to another level at Florida.

Dev - You forgot to mention that Liendo and Dressel both train under Nesty at U of Florida. Thus every single practice they are training together. I would say "racing each other" but that might not be healthy. I recall reading an article back in 1999 when Dara Torres was training at Stanford for her first comeback in the 2000 Oly. Jenny Thompson also trained there and they swam the same events, 50 free, 100 free, and 100 fly. After a couple of months of them training together, their coach Richard Quick decided they needed to practice separately b/c there was just too much rivalry in their practices.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I did not realize that Leindo and Dressel are effectively at the same practices, training for the same events. YIKES!!! Maybe one of them should get Biondi to extract revenge for 1988 :-)

A bit of a tangent but about 8-10 yrs ago the poster SH posted a thread entitled "Touched out by Matt Biondi". He had swum against Biondi in the U.S. Masters Champs in the 100 yd IM and SH went 55.0 vs MB's 54.9. I believe they were both around 45/46 at the time, so 45-49 age group. SH hardly ever posts here any more but he is a Biondi-like swimmer, basically same level as tallswimmer. I searched for "Touched out by Matt Biondi" but got no results.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I can confirm that SH is alive and well, and spends more time over in the LR these days. He finally beat me in our annual Super Bowl bet, and I was glad to finally pay him for a change. Think he has taken a step back from top level swimming, but it is always there when the urge returns. And I think he was just 40+ back in the old swim days you are referencing, a bit younger than Biondi.

Speaking of the latter, he is late 50's now and still killing it. I see him at local meets now and again, still crushing age group dreams. He has his own meet every year in Conejo valley and usually pitches up there to blast some fast 50's and 100's...One of the few really top from that era that has kept up with the whole masters thing, he really just loves swimming I suppose...

That is really cool that Biondi still races masters. What events is he racing these days?

https://www.usms.org/...lowage=&highage=

You can check out his results and age progression here;

Because of his 50 prowess, Dressels ability to pace a race really well is underrated. Perhaps no longer, but he could have been an Olympian in the 200 free and 200 fly.

So I don’t think Liendo has more speed than Dressel in a 50 fly.

One other fact: Dressel had to carry his Florida teams into the finals of relays back in his college days. And when he was swimming, relays were prelims/finals meaning by the time the meet was halfway over, Dressel had already maxed out 4 or 5 efforts. They don’t do it that way, and it really helps come day 2/3 of the meet. Most people think his 100 fly and 100 free SCY records are a little soft in that Dressel was probably capable of a little more.

So I don’t think Liendo comes too close to getting the WR in the 100M fly. But hey, 49.8 or so probably wins it and he’s got a shot at that (In fact , Canada COULD sweep the butterfly events altogether. ). Maybe Liendo gets that record someday, but just not this summer…

OK, thanks for the info. Didn't know that you and SH were buddies. Regarding the LR, I just avoid that place b/c I'm afraid if I really got involved in those discussions, which I totally could do, I'd be on ST for like 10 hrs/day. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

10 hrs on ST + 9 hrs of sleep leaves 4 hrs to train and 1 hrs to eat. Problem solved!!!