Olympic Trials Wave I: Day 3 Results, Day 4 Preview

By Reach for the Wall Staff

The 3rd night of finals started off with the Women’s 400 Freestyle. In the first heat, Nicole Fye (Ohio State/FISH), held the top seed (9th overall) and swam hard throughout the race, moving up from 8th after the first 50 to finishing 6th, just off her prelim swim. Congratulations Nicole!
The next race for a PVS swimmer was the Women’s 100 Butterfly, where Lexi Cuomo entered the A-Final as the 3rd seed. Lexi was aggressive from the outset, touching first at the 50 in 27.49, .08 ahead of top seeded Trude Rothrock. The lead changed a few times over the last 50 meters and Nikki Venema hit the wall 1st, followed closely by Lexi, who touched out 3rd place finisher Gigi Johnson by .03!! In both her swims, Lexi posted best times, finishing the A-final race in 1:00.06!!

The Men’s 200 Backstroke featured two PVS swimmers, Drew Carbone (Unattached) in the B-Final and Sam O’Brien (FISH) in the A-Final. Drew qualified 16th and jumped at the opportunity to race, he was out in 2nd place at the first 50 & held that position throughout the race, but at the final touch hit the pads 3rd. The top 3 finishers were separated by a mere .68 seconds, with drew missing 2nd by .03. Drew’s final time of 2:02.65 was well ahead of his prelim time & better than his seed time. Sam O’Brien was up next having qualified 7th in the A-Final. Sam battled and was in a very tight race, at the end he maintained his seed finishing 7th. While his swim in Finals wasn’t his best time, he was ‘in the race’ the whole way & had many cheering him on from home- Congratulations Sam!!

Today (Day 4) is the final day of competition for Wave I and includes the 200IM, 50 Freestyle, 200 Breaststroke and 1500 Freestyle. All the live stream coverage will be available on NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app.

Here’s the rundown of PVS swimmers competing today:

Women’s 50 Freestyle: Lexi Cuomo (UVA/MAKO), Missy Cundiff (William & Mary/SNOW), Camille Spink (NCAP), Katie Mack (NCAP), Tatum Wall (NCAP)
Men’s 50 Freestyle: Corey Shepard (USAF/Occoquan Swimming), AJ Ross (South Carolina/NCAP)
Men’s 200 Breaststroke: Jakob Frick (NCAP)

Editor’s note: Thanks to the reader comments for adding other PVS swimmers that we missed in the Men’s 50 Freestyle!