At his weakest, Dressel was none of those things. At his weakest — taking eight months off swimming from August 2022, which helped cost him a spot on the U.S. World Championship team in 2023 — he couldn't even stand the smell of chlorine.
But Dressel has another, newer version that will be unveiled, to much less hype and anticipation, at the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials over the next nine nights at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and, if all goes well, at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris a month later.
The 27-year-old Dressel has been strengthened by months of therapy and self-discovery since his abrupt withdrawal from the 2022 World Aquatics Championships in Budapest (mentioned at the time for health issues, now understood to have been psychological). He's now a father – his wife, Megan, gave birth to son August in February – and with Olympic summer upon us, both his outward demeanor and his times on the scoreboard are trending in a positive direction.
The unknowns of Dressel's current abilities, combined with his dominant performance at the 2021 Tokyo Games, in which he won five gold medals, and capped off Team USA's historic world domination at last summer's world championships in Fukuoka, where Australia won 13 gold medals and the United States won seven, make Dressel the most intriguing figure in the pool in Indianapolis.
“It's a double-edged sword,” Dressel said of her Olympic achievement during a sponsored appearance in April. “You have the confidence because you've done it before, but there's also a lot of pressure to do it again.”
But the centerpiece of the next nine nights of the U.S. 2024 Trials, as measured by media coverage, fan engagement and pure awe, will not be the swimmers but the building in which they compete.
After four consecutive attempts in Omaha with a basketball arena that could seat about 13,000, USA Swimming made the bold decision to move to Indianapolis, the sprawling home of the NFL's Colts, and build a pool on the field where Peyton Manning once threw touchdown passes. Even if half the stadium were curtained off to accommodate a warm-up pool, the capacity would be about 30,000. There are no official attendance records for international swimming, but a figure close to this would likely be the largest crowd ever to watch a swimming meet.
There's no shortage of fascinating people to chronicle over the nine days of the competition, starting with Katie Ledecky, the legendary freestyle swimmer and seven-time Olympic gold medalist. At 27 and aiming for her fourth Olympic Games, Ledecky will compete in the 200, 400, 800 and 1,500 meters in Indianapolis before heading to Paris, where she needs two more gold medals to overtake American Jenny Thompson, who holds the most gold medals in Olympic history by a female swimmer with eight.
Kate Douglas, a seven-time gold medalist and University of Virginia athlete for the 2023 NCAA Championships, could compete in as many as five events in Indianapolis and be the top seed in the 100 freestyle, 200 breaststroke and 200 individual medley. In Paris, she could face off against Canada's Summer McIntosh for the title of best all-around female swimmer in the world.
Given the thin men's field, the U.S. team will need its female stars to perform strongly in Paris, and there's no doubt the rest of the world will be catching up to the U.S. in the pool, if not already.
It wasn't that long ago that American dominance was unquestioned. At the 2012 London Olympics, the U.S. team won 16 of the 32 available gold medals, and won the same number at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where Australia and Hungary were a distant second with three gold medals each. But at the Tokyo Games in 2021, held after a year-long delay due to the coronavirus pandemic, Australia still favored the U.S. team, narrowing the gap in gold medals to 11-9.
And at last summer's world championships in Fukuoka, where Dressel was not eligible to compete because she was still in the early stages of recovery after a hiatus, Australia was on a roll. The U.S. led the medal count with 38 wins and 25 losses, but losing the gold medal to Australia was a blow.
“We want to win as many medals as we can and win as many gold medals as we can,” USA Swimming CEO Tim Hinchey said. “That's always our goal every time we put our athletes in front of a global audience.”
It's neither accurate nor fair to pin all of the USA's winning hopes this summer on Dressel, but it's also true that the gold medal margin Australia won in Fukuoka is completely negated by the events Dressel won in Tokyo and the events Australia won in his absence. Even if Dressel returns to full Tokyo form, which is anyone's guess, it may not be enough to keep the USA at the top.
“At least on the men's side, Caleb is absolutely key,” said Rowdy Gaines, a three-time Olympic gold medalist and longtime commentator for NBC's swimming broadcasts. [individual] Last summer, the gold medal in Tokyo was not the result the United States had hoped for.
Dressel has spoken only in generalities about his long break from swimming and the events that led to it. He has made few mainstream media appearances and, through a spokesman, declined interview requests for the subject, only occasionally offering details on swimming-focused podcasts and in print media. And even then, understandably, he has refrained from sharing specifics.
He said he fought “the critic in my head” and “pushed away” “a lot of stuff that was bubbling up.” He said he was devastated by his result in Tokyo. Despite winning five gold medals, joining Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz as the only male swimmers to win at least three individual gold medals at one Olympic Games, he didn't hit any of his goal times. He tried for another year, but said he was “done” by the time of the world championships in Budapest in June 2022.
“There was a lot more at stake than just my swimming career, let's just say that,” he said on the SwimSwam podcast from the website of the same name. After he withdrew midway through the Budapest meet, he quickly turned to counseling in Gainesville, Fla., near the University of Florida campus, where he trains. “Five hours a week,” he says. “Swimming is [not] The reason I'm in the photo is because I couldn't get close to the pool. I deliberately took a detour around the campus to avoid the pool.”
For months, he hadn't even dipped his toe in the water, or only to go to a riverside “adventure center” where he could swim with manatees — a birthday gift from Meghan. Instead, he turned to introspection and farming, tending cows and chickens on the Dressel family's 10 acres south of Gainesville.
It was there, in the spring of 2023, that the seeds of his return were sown. Dressel was sitting in a tractor, the place where many of his greatest revelations would occur, when he was seized by a sudden realization: It would be perfectly fine if I never swam again. Paradoxically, that was also the moment he knew he was ready to return, because he I wanted not need To.
Dressel, who hadn't used texting or email much before, suddenly started messaging Anthony Nesty, his coach at Gator Swim Club. Nesty gave Dressel the space he needed, apart from checking in every now and then. He only got replies occasionally. But Nesty sensed something had changed.
“It was clear he was ready to start traveling again,” Nesty said.
His return to the pool in May 2023 was slow, gradual and tough. As agreed upon by his coaches and therapists, Dressel's initial training sessions were limited to 30 minutes, three times a week. He eventually increased his full training sessions to eight times a week in preparation for the U.S. World Championships Trials in June, but it was impossible to get him back to his best form right away. He missed the cut in each of the four events he competed in, and failed to make the finals in two of those events.
When the world championships were being held half a world away, Dressel didn't even watch. It was disappointing, but he was in for the long haul: The 2024 Paris Olympics will be far more important to his legacy. In the intervening months, his progress can be easily tracked by the digital numbers on a scoreboard.
Take the 100m freestyle, the global standard for sprinters. Dressel held the U.S. record for the distance at the 2019 World Championships in 46.96 seconds, but won gold in Tokyo in an Olympic record time of 47.02 seconds. But in her first attempt back in May 2023, she ran 50.29 seconds, and at the U.S. Team Trials in June, she improved her time to 49.42 seconds, more than a second and a half short of making the team. By the end of 2023, she had improved her time to 48.85 seconds, and in her most recent meet this spring, she ran 48.30 seconds, good for fourth among Americans this season.
“He's in a totally different place now than he was at the trials last summer,” Nesty said. “He's weathered the storm.”
Added Ledecky, the American freestyle legend and Dressel's Florida teammate: “When he came back, there wasn't anything particularly noticeable. It was like, 'Wow, he seems a lot happier.' He's always had a sense of joy. But since he's come back, you could almost say he's on fire. Happy, healthy, positive and a true light on the pool deck. We know he'll make Team USA or not.” [for Paris] Beyond winning medals, he will be an integral part of the team's energy.”
But realistically, Dressel would need to shave at least one second off his time at the trials to finish in the top two and qualify for Paris. Whether he can do that is anyone's guess.
“Would I be surprised if he went 46.9 at Indy? I wouldn't be surprised at all. Would I be surprised if he went 47.8? I wouldn't be surprised at all,” said Gaines, himself a former world record holder in the 100 freestyle. “We don't know how fast he's going to swim.”
But Gaines, who considers Dressel a friend, has seen him often lately and knows his look and voice well. They spent a few hours together at an event in Tampa last month, and Gaines was struck by how different Dressel's bearing and demeanor was from a year or two ago. It says nothing about his swimming ability. But it says everything about how those around Dressel expect him to perform this summer.
“He seemed really optimistic, mentally, physically and emotionally,” Gaines said. “He was very positive. He seemed to have gained a lot of perspective. And he felt good about his place in history, regardless of how it turned out in Indianapolis or Paris.”
