U.S. swimmers can’t take gold, or Caeleb Dressel, for granted anymore

NANTERRE, France – As Caeleb Dressel flung himself from the starting blocks Saturday at Paris La Défense Arena, at the end of the first finals session of the Paris 2024 swim meet, Team USA was still without a gold medal.

There are few sure things anymore for the American swimmers, in what feels like a transitional era for this powerhouse program, but Dressel with a nearly 2-second lead in the anchor leg of the men’s 4x100-meter freestyle relay is still one of them.

There is a reason the U.S. swim team considers Dressel its ultimate firewall against the encroaching tide of parity coming from Australia and other rival nations, why the Americans would take 90% of Dressel’s best over 100% of someone else, why they chose him over some faster, younger teammates – the ones who built him that lead Saturday night – for the crucial anchor leg.

When Dressel, 27, touched the wall more than a second clear of the Australian to his right, Team USA had that first gold medal, with Dressel and the three youngers – Jack Alexy (21), Chris Guiliano (21) and Hunter Armstrong (23) – finishing in 3 minutes, 9.28 seconds, safely ahead of the runner-up Aussies (3:10.35) and the bronze medalists from Italy (3:10.70).

“They made my job easy,” Dressel said.

For Dressel, the victory extended one of the more remarkable runs in recent swimming history: He remains unbeaten in Olympic finals. Eight times to the starting blocks, eight gold medals. Although he isn’t the unbeatable force he was in Tokyo, where he won five gold medals and cemented his status as the premier male swimmer in the world, he remains an elite racer whose ability to get his hand to the wall is still world-class.

“Relays are a little more special, to be honest. It takes me back to my first gold,” Dressel said, recalling his two relay wins at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. “It really doesn’t get old. It’s really special standing on the podium with these guys.”

The crowd that filled into La Défense Arena, a 30,000-seat indoor stadium that is home to the Racing 92 rugby team, cheered on the Americans with only slightly less energy and volume than they did the French swimmers in the field. After two playings of “Advance Australia Fair” – the Aussie national anthem – finally the last medal ceremony of the night brought a rendition of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” On the top step of the podium, Armstrong was in tears as the anthem rang out.

“I will give my entire body and soul up for these boys,” said Armstrong, who swam the third leg, of the emotions behind his 46.75-second split, the fastest of any of the four Americans. “I knew I had to give Caeleb everything I had, so I’m glad I was able to get my job done.”

If Dressel’s presence at the end of that relay was a comfort to his three American teammates, that relay’s presence at the end of an otherwise unfavorable opening night race card was a comfort to the entire team. While the victory in the men’s relay prevented a gold-medal shutout on night one, the Americans trail their rivals from Down Under in both the gold medal count (2-1) and the overall count (4-3).

Earlier Saturday night, Australian middle-distance star Ariarne Titmus turned a potential race-of-the-century matchup against American distance legend Katie Ledecky and Canadian teenager Summer McIntosh into a rout, touching the wall in 3:57.49, nearly a second faster than silver medalist McIntosh (3:58.37) and more than 3 seconds clear of Ledecky (4:00.86). For Ledecky, the bronze medal was the first of her Olympic career, to go with seven golds and three silvers, and leaves her one medal shy of tying three others for the most by a female swimmer in history.

You would need to go back to 1988 – when they amassed eight gold medals and 18 overall, compared to 11 and 28 for East Germany – to find the last time Team USA failed to finish atop the medal table in swimming. But Australia, in particular, has been closing fast and outpaced the Americans in golds a year ago at the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan – a meet in which, notably, Dressel did not swim, having recently taken an eight-month mental health break from the sport.

When it comes to the women’s side of the sport, the Australians have surpassed Team USA for world supremacy, based on the results from the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as well as those 2023 world championships – both of which saw the Aussies double the Americans’ gold-medal hauls.

On Saturday, their women’s 4x100 free relay of Mollie O’Callaghan, Shayna Jack, Emma McKeon and Meg Harris (3:28.92) torched the silver-medal-winning American quartet of Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh, Torri Huske and Simone Manuel (3:30.20). Walsh and Huske, however, have Team USA pointed toward a potential gold-silver sweep of the women’s 100-meter butterfly on Sunday, having finished 1-2 in the semifinals Saturday.

Like Dressel, Manuel, 27, has been absent from the international scene in recent years, having been forced into an extended break by a bout of overtraining syndrome. Like Dressel, she poured an infinite amount of emotion and energy into trying to will herself back into form. And like Dressel, she viewed her anchor leg as a mission she once thought she might never be entrusted again to take.

“It just feels good to be back here, honestly,” Manuel said. “I didn’t know if I would ever be performing at this level again, and so just have the full-circle moment of being on this relay again from 2021 to now, but in a happier and healthier place, I just think is really special.

“So I’m really excited I got to get my first Paris medal with these women.”

Like Dressel and Ledecky, Manuel represents a link back to the glory years of the past for Team USA. All three earned gold medals at Rio 2016, the last Olympics of Michael Phelps, when the Americans could still be counted up to dominate the medal table – that year’s haul was 16 golds and 33 overall, compared to three and 10 for second-place Australia – and the pipeline of talent seemed endless.

To get the Americans back to that point, if it’s even possible anymore, is going to take more than the efforts of their veterans.

The remaining eight days of the meet will show if the younger group has the wherewithal to hold off Australia and the rest of the world for another generation.