Although the glow of Caleb Dressel's seven gold medals might suggest otherwise, he knows swimming can be a grueling, stifling sport.
When it comes to sprinting from one end of the pool to the other (and back), he's arguably one of the best in the world. He holds the world record in the 100m butterfly, having first taken that historic mark from Michael Phelps in 2019. Dressel then broke the world record in the event at the Tokyo Olympics, winning five gold medals in five events.
Despite this, Dressel felt miserable.
He obsessed with where he felt he had failed. In one race, it was a turn. In another, it was the finish. Head position. It didn't matter that he'd touched the wall first multiple times. It didn't matter that he'd brought home a gold medal and helped Team USA take the lead in the medal count. He chased perfection. He chased times. He chased stretch goals. He wasn't achieving them.
“I created a monster inside of me because I was so obsessed with perfectionism,” she told former Olympians Missy Franklin and Katie Hoff on their podcast, “Unfiltered Waters.” “I was so obsessed with thinking, 'If I don't run this time, it means I'm a bad person or I didn't practice enough. If I don't run the world record, it means… I didn't care enough.'”
The sport that had been so fun and engaging for her as a child was the exact opposite, and remained that way for years. But Dressel kept pushing herself, despite listening to an inner voice that was harshly criticizing her.
He now describes it as “until I broke” after he abruptly withdrew midway through the 2022 World Championships in Budapest and was out of the sport for eight months.
Of that time in Gainesville, Florida, Dressel would only say that he spent a lot of time with a therapist. His wife, Megan, was there for him and supported him, but she also knew that there was a lot he needed to talk through in his mind. Some days he did nothing. Most days, he avoided walking past the University of Florida swimming pool because he didn't want to smell the chlorine.
He had to think about who he was beyond his best days and what made him tick outside the pool. He had to reexamine how others felt about him and why they loved him. He had to learn how to smile again.
The journey hasn't been easy, and the progress hasn't always been linear. But it's what makes the 27-year-old Dressel who he is as a swimmer and as a person (and as a new dad). It's also why he's back in the pool and heading to Paris. He's one of the stars of the U.S. team, arguably the most important piece of the puzzle for the U.S. swimming team to bring home more gold medals and win the tournament than any other team. There is outside pressure, to be sure, but in Dressel's mind, his biggest critics are quiet.
“It's really tough,” Dressel said. Athletic “It's always been ingrained in me to want to find ways to get better, and I still do, but I've never gotten so obsessed with it that I lose sight of the true enjoyment of the sport. It's hard, and it's not like I suddenly figured it out this year. I'm really proud of the things I've done differently, like enjoying parts of the sport instead of beating myself up about not being perfect,” he said last month.
“It's still very much a work in progress.”
Caleb Dressel won five gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics. But a year later, he retired from the sport. “I'm still in the middle of it,” he said of his comeback. (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Now, Dressel seems to be someone who has understood a lot about himself through therapy, and one of the first things he talks about is how regular consultations with a therapist have helped him.
“I try not to focus too much on the results and just enjoy racing and training, two sports I really enjoy,” Dressel said. “There are parts of the sport I don't like, parts I really hate, but it's worth holding on to for the moments I really enjoy. It's all about balance. I don't expect every part of the sport to be the best for me, but I've focused on the parts I really enjoy.”
“That's the main difference for me. I've always loved training. I've always loved being with the team. The actual racing part, I really, really enjoy it. From the moment the starting gun goes, it's just fun. So I've just been trying to swim. This year, just swim.”
Dressel will compete individually in the 50-meter freestyle and 100-meter butterfly at the Olympics and is likely to compete in multiple relay events. At the U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, she finished third in the 100-meter freestyle final, missing out on a chance to defend her gold medal in the event in Paris.
But he's happy to be part of the Olympic team, proud of what they accomplished in the trials to qualify for the Olympics, and ecstatic that his young son, August, got to watch it all in the stands, held by Meghan.
“Nobody can take that away,” Dressel said in Indianapolis. “He's not going to remember it. I'm going to tell him, trust me, I have the pictures to prove it. … That was a really special moment. Megan sees firsthand not only the parenting side of it, but the struggles that come with sports.”
“The tears that come with it, the frustrations and the great moments, and being able to share that with them because they're going through the same thing. It was really special for August to be able to see that.”
Meghan shared a video of Dressel and baby August at an Olympic training camp in North Carolina this month, another moment captured and preserved to commemorate a once-in-a-lifetime moment. They'll also be traveling to Paris with Dressel's parents and other family members. Dressel said he wouldn't be where he is today without their support, and without Meghan, whom Dressel calls the “superhero” of his family.
Becoming a parent is wonderful in so many ways, but perhaps the greatest lesson it teaches us is perspective, especially for those who have spent most of their lives chasing perfection that doesn't and can never exist.
“I don't know if I'll run my best time again, and that's hard to say out loud, it really is,” Dressel said. “When you're 19, 20, 21, you just slog through it. I'm still training harder than ever and looking for every way to shave off a few tenths of a second, but I don't know. I don't know if I can do it. I'm really good at racing, and if they let me race, I'll get as close as I can, even if I have to kill myself to get there. I'll put myself in that situation.”
So he doesn't know what Paris will bring, but he does know he's older, wiser and genuinely happier than he was before his last Olympic Games — and not just when he's straddling lane lines after the race or slapping the water in celebration — but so are others.
“He always had that smile,” said Katie Ledecky, the seven-time gold medalist and training partner at the University of Florida. “He took a break, and when he came back, he had that smile every day. If you look at his progress over the past year, the way he's just gotten better and better every meet, it seems like he just loves racing. And maybe even more than racing, he loves training, and that makes everyone around him better.”
It will only make one of the best swimmers in the world better, which is why, no matter what medals hang around Dressel's neck, that smile is worth its weight in gold.
“I don't know if I can run my best time again, and it's hard to say that out loud,” said Caleb Dressel, who plans to attempt it in Paris later this month. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
(Illustration above: Dan Goldfarb / Athletic(Photo by Sarah Steer/Getty Images)
