Swimmers and stars come together at Golden Goggle Awards

November 19, 2008 -  If you’ve been wondering where your favorite swimmers have been hiding since Beijing, most of them were at the New York Hilton on Monday night for USA Swimming’s fifth annual Golden Goggle Awards (clever name, huh?).

Olympic champions Natalie Coughlin and Michael Phelps were the big winners at the event, which was hosted by Bob Costas and celebrated the accomplishments of the totally awesome 2008 Olympic Swim Team.

Coughlin won top honors on the women’s side, taking home the Female Athlete of the Year trophy. Coughlin earned six medals at the Olympics – one gold, two silver, and three bronze, becoming the first woman in any sport, to win six medals in one Olympiad. In 2008, Coughlin broke the 100m back world record three times and set a total of 11 American records.

“This was a great year,” Coughlin said. “This year was really special with so many records being broken and I’m really glad to have been a part of it.”

Phelps’ record-setting performance in Beijing earned him three Golden Goggle Awards at USA Swimming’s annual banquet including Male Athlete of the Year and Male Performance of the Year.

Women’s swimmer Rebecca Soni was honored with two Golden Goggle awards, the Breakout Performer of the Year Award and the Female Performance of the Year Award for her stellar performance in the 200m breast at the Olympics in 2008. The USC senior took home a total of three Olympic medals in Beijing, a gold in the 200m breast and silvers in the 100m breast and 400m medley relay. Soni broke the world record in the 200m breast, and defeated heavy favorite Leisel Jones of Australia to win her first gold.

Dara Torres, 41, who won three silver medals at the Beijing Olympics, said at the New York banquet  that if she can stay healthy, she hopes to race at the world championships next summer.

Among the celebrity guests in attendance tonight were Donald Trump, Tiki Barber, David Blaine, Ana Ortiz (”Ugly Betty’), Heather Matarazzo, as well as Olympic legends Summer Sanders, Pablo Morales, Gary Hall Jr., Lenny Krayzelburg, Jenny Thompson, and Rowdy Gaines.

In other swim news, the AP reports that Katie Hoff is now training with Michael Phelps’s coach, Golden Goggle winner Bob Bowman, who has returned to the North Baltimore Aquatic Club after four years at the University of Michagan:

Swimmer Katie Hoff has changed coaches after a disappointing Olympics in which the six-time world champion failed to win a gold medal in a half dozen events.

Dara Torres makes a splash at Olympic Trials

July 8, 2008 – For eight days, the Qwest Center in Omaha served as the epicenter of heartbreak and elation, as the U.S. Swimming Olympic Trials steadily unfolded.

We witnessed Michael Phelps earn a shot to overtake Mark Spitz and win eight gold medals at the Beijing Games. We watched Natalie Coughlin assert her dominance in the 100-meter backstroke and become the first woman in history to break 59 seconds. We saw Amanda Beard complete an unlikely comeback and make her fourth Olympic team and Katie Hoff qualify for five events plus a relay.

But the swimmer who quite possibly made the biggest splash at the eight-day trials, was 41 year old Dara Torres who won the 50- and 100-meter freestyles. Torres won the 50 in 24.25 seconds, bettering the American record she set the day before. Former Cal star Jessica Hardy finished second in 24.82 to add another event to her Olympic program, which includes the 100 breaststroke and 400 freestyle relay.

With her two year old daughter watching, Torres successfully completed her bid to make a fifth Olympic team. She nabbed her first gold medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. And she is committed to adding another Olympic medal to the nine she already owns. “I can’t sit here and say, ‘Oh, I’m just glad to be going,’” Torres said. “I want to win a medal.”

Olympic team members now head to Stanford on Monday for two weeks of training before departing to Singapore for another camp. We’ll be watching!

Girls rule the pool – records fall at U.S. Swim Trials

July 2, 2008 – The U.S. Olympic Team Trials in swimming began June 29 and will run to July 6 in Omaha, Neb.  The good news is that NBC and sister station USA are providing live and highlighted TV coverage of the event. The bad news for U.S. swimmers is that it’s a tough venue – no more than the top two swimmers in each event, aside from the 100-meter and 200-meter freestyle, are eligible to be named to the Olympic team.

Expectations are high and for good reason. Intense training, combined with the controversial LZR swimsuit, are causing world records to fall on an almost daily basis. In many cases, a sixth place this week would have been worthy of a gold medal last time.

Natalie Coughlin blitzed to a world record in the 100-meter backstroke to highlight another breathless day of action on Tuesday. Coughlin stormed to the wall in a time of 58.97 seconds, trimming 0.06 off her own mark to become the first woman to dip under 59 seconds.  

A day earlier, Hayley McGregory knocked off Natalie Coughlin’s 4 1/2 -month-old mark in the 100 backstroke with a time of 59.15 seconds, only to have Coughlin take it right back in the next heat at 59.03.

Christine Magnuson, a Tennessee swimmer, booked a ticket to the Olympics with a win in the 100 butterfly. The victory was helped by Coughlin’s decision not to swim, even though she holds the American record. Jessica Hardy also claimed her first trip to the Olympics by winning the 100-meter breaststroke in 1:06.87 ahead of 2000 Sydney gold medalist Megan Jendrick.

Teenager Katie Hoff, who has claimed a world record in the 400 medley and two Olympic spots, looks poised to add to more events to her Beijing program after posting the top times in the 200-meter freestyle and 200-meter individual medley. Hoff is from the same North Baltimore club that launched Michael Phelps and is quickly becoming the sport’s other resident superstar.

With the trials as exciting as they are, will we see even more records fall at the Olympics?

Records fall at Missouri Grand Prix swim meet

Feb. 17, 2008 – Who said you can’t swim fast in the morning? Certainly not Kirsty Coventry, the former Olympic gold medalist who added “world record holder” to her impressive credentials yesterday at the Missouri Grand Prix.

With the normal meet schedule flipped around to simulate the schedule for the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics – prelims in the evening, finals in the morning – Coventry proved that records can go down before the sun.

Yesterday morning at the Mizzou Aquatics Center, Coventry smashed the 18-year-old world mark in the women’s 200-meter backstroke, finishing the same event in which she won gold at the 2004 Athens Olympics in 2 minutes, 6.39 seconds.  Coventry, who lives and trains in the United States, topped the world record of 2:06.62 set by Hungary’s Krisztina Egerszegi in August 1991.

That wasn’t the only long-standing record toppled during the Missouri Grand Prix’s first of three finals sessions. After coming within a second of breaking Janet Evans’ 20-year-old American record in the women’s 400 freestyle during Friday night’s preliminaries, Katie Hoff eclipsed the mark yesterday, finishing in 4:02.20.

Evans’ previous record of 4:03.85, set during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, was the longest-standing U.S. swimming record. In fact, the record had stood longer than Hoff has been alive. Hoff, the youngest member of the American Olympic team at the 2004 Athens Games, turns 19 in June.

In the 200, Hoff defeated five-time Olympic medalist Natalie Coughlin for the second time in two days with a gold-medal winning time of 1:56.08.

But Natalie was breaking records too. She swam the 100-meter backstroke in 59.21 seconds Sunday, breaking her own women’s world record. Coughlin, who won five medals at the 2004 Olympics, set the mark during a preliminary race in the competition.

Katie Hoff selected USOC Sportswoman of the Year

Jan. 17, 2008 – Swimmer Katie Hoff has been selected as the Sportswoman of the Year for 2007 by the United States Olympic Committee.  In addition, the women’s world championships gymnastics team was chosen as Team of the Year.

Hoff captured Sportswoman of the Year honors for the second time, having been previously honored in 2005. She earned a total of 11 medals in 2007, eight of which were gold. Included were gold medals in the 400-meter individual medley, 200-meter individual medley and 800-meter free relay team at the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia.

The women’s gymnastics team, comprised of Ivana Hong, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Samantha Peszek, Alicia Sacramone, Shayla Worley and reserve Bridget Sloan, captured gold at the World Championships. It marked the first time that the USA won the team and all-around titles at the same World Championships.

The USOC also selected track athlete Allyson Felix as the first-ever recipient of the Outstanding Performance of the Year Awards. Felix won the 200 meter individual gold medal and was a part of the 4 x 100 meters and 4 x 400 meters championship relay teams at the 2007 World Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Osaka, Japan.