INDIANAPOLIS — Years before the world records were broken, before Gretchen Walsh made her breakthrough and emerged as a future Olympic star, a scary thought swirled around in her head and got in the way.
They broke out into a dance every time she approached a pool like the one Walsh conquered on Saturday and Sunday night to qualify for Paris 2024 in the 100m butterfly.
They continued to dance despite their limitless athleticism.
Walsh dove into the 25-yard pool, glided through the water and made her mark on the record books.
But on the blocks of the 50-meter pool, she was essentially setting herself up for failure. Even before she even got in the water, she had accepted the disappointment. She told herself: It's okay if you don't succeed.
And in distance meet after distance meet, she didn't. She couldn't. She swept the short-course NCAA meet, ultimately breaking records in three different strokes, but she didn't even qualify for the 2022 World Distance Championships. “She really bought into the idea that she was a short-course swimmer, not a distance swimmer. [swimmer]” says Kristen Shefnas, Walsh's “confidence coach.”
That mindset, perhaps more than any technical or physical shortcomings, was the barrier standing between Walsh and her first Olympics. It was a mental wall that separated her from superstardom. Over the past two years, she had chipped away at it, bit by bit. And here at Lucas Oil Stadium, on the first day of the USA Swimming Trials, she had smashed through that wall on her way to the biggest stage in sports.
'What have I done? Is there something wrong?'
Born and raised in Nashville, Walsh began making figurative waves in the swimming world as a young teenager with her talent that couldn't be overlooked. At age 13, she competed in the 2016 Olympic Trials. In 2019, at age 16, she competed in the Junior World Championships and brought home six gold medals. She did all of this in a 50-meter pool, generating boundless excitement.
But in the months and eventually years that followed, she fell just short of that golden age of 16.
She finished fifth in the 50m freestyle and 28th in the 100m, missing out on the 2021 Olympics.
And then she began to wonder. “What did I do? Is there something wrong?”
The answer, in part, was that although she had mastered the underwater strokes that make up 65 percent of short-course swimming and 30 percent of long-distance swimming, she struggled to master any of the strokes.
But the other part of the answer became the thought itself.
“She had some failed long-distance swims and developed a fear,” Shevčunas said. “From then on she swam terrified.”
Walsh's gift is speed. “She's fast“She can swim fast,” said Toddy DeSorbo, her University of Virginia coach, “and she can swim fast.” But before she could, on the blocks in the long pool, she was worried about the second half of the race, especially the 100 freestyle.
“she [her speed]”I was so scared I'd be exhausted and dead by the end of the race,” Shefnas said, so she held off.
What Walsh had to learn was to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable.” She had to take risks, stop overthinking, and embrace the pain that was coming. She dismantled those fearful thoughts and, instead, something; anything.
She's worked hard over the past two years to replace them with an unwavering focus on race strategy: She's zeroed in on the first 25 meters, or the first six strokes. Of course, it wasn't groundbreaking or innovative, but Walsh says it was and remains “something that's easy to get in your head.”
And it paid off: Last summer, Walsh competed at the World Championships, where she won a bronze medal in the 50-meter individual relay and then, by the fall, her times had steadily improved.
By November, she was ready to say, “People always say I'm just a bathtub swimmer and I can't do long-distance pool swimmers, but I think I've finally proven to myself that I can do both.”
Olympic World Records
For the 2023-24 collegiate season, she has her focus shifting back to the short course, but behind the hard work, she is also preparing to make a breakthrough in the long distance events.
“She’s gotten so much stronger this year,” DeSorbo said last month. “She’s a lot stronger than she was before. [in September]And I think that's really helped her butterflies in particular.”
She also “overhauled” her freestyle technique, DeSorbo explained, and worked on her aerobic threshold to help Walsh maintain speed in the last 50 meters of the 100. Shevčunas said the 100 freestyle went from being her “nemesis race” to being a potential Olympic medal race.
But it was the 100-meter butterfly here this weekend at Lucas Oil Stadium that made Walsh's breakthrough.
“We really [butterfly] “Before this year, they hadn't done much at all in the NCAAs,” DeSorbo said. But this year, they put in the work and improved rapidly, from the short course to the long course, accelerating faster than anyone could have imagined, including Walsh himself.
She broke the world record in the semifinals on Saturday night, and after an emotional night on Sunday, she swam 0.13 seconds slower, still below her previous world record, and qualified for her first Olympic Games, where she'll likely aim for an even faster time.
Even after breaking the record on Saturday, she said she still has “room to grow in this race.”
