Darren Lee Photography
Verona’s Beata Nelson has qualified for six Olympic events.
This week, 48 swimmers from Wisconsin are among the 1,740 swimmers competing in the 2016 U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Omaha, Neb. Many of them — including future Badger freshman Beata Nelson, who won 12 WIAA Division 1 state titles during her high school career for Verona/Mount Horeb — are current or former swimmers for age-group clubs from the Madison area and/or the University of Wisconsin.
“A lot of kids here grew up around the pool in the All-City Swim & Dive League and then joined a club team,” Ivy Martin, one of Madison’s most decorated swimmers, told me last week, two days before she left for Omaha. “There are a lot of opportunities in the Madison area, and there are a lot of especially talented swimmers here.”
This is Martin’s second Olympic trials; she finished 35th in the 50-meter freestyle in 2012. “This year, my goal is to make the Olympics,” she says. Martin, 22, got off to a strong start on June 26, the first day of competition, with a personal-best time of 59.39 seconds in the 100-meter butterfly, good for 13th place overall. She’ll swim in the 100-meter freestyle prelims Thursday and the 50-meter prelims Saturday.
Even though her mindset is to approach the weeklong trials “as just another swim meet,” Martin knows the lives of 47 swimmers will change forever this week. To qualify for the Olympics in Rio, which begin Aug. 5, a swimmer must place in the top two in one of 13 individual events. To be considered for the 4x100-meter and 4x200-meter freestyle relays, swimmers must place among the top six in the 100- and 200-meter freestyle events.
Beata Nelson qualified for six events at the trials. She finished way out of contention in the 100-meter butterfly (1:03.60) but was scheduled to swim almost every day this week.
More than 200,000 fans will pack the sold-out CenturyLink Center through July 3, adding credence to USA Swimming assistant executive director Mike Unger’s claim that “we’re in a golden age of U.S. swimming.”