World Champions Ryan Lochte (Daytona Beach, Fla.) and Rebecca Soni (Plainsboro, N.J.) and coach Eddie Reese scooped the top honours at the 6th annual 2009 USA Swimming Foundation Golden Goggle Awards at the Beverly Hilton last night.
Reese claimed Coach of the Year for his terrific achievements at Austin, Texas, with the University and Longhorn Aquatics squads. Reese placed six athletes on to the US men’s team at World Championships in 2009, namely Aaron Peirsol, Eric Shanteau, David Walters, Ricky Berens, Garrett Weber-Gale and Jackson Wilcox. What a list: Peirsol won both Olympic-distance backstroke crowns (sort of 'of course' in world record time), Shanteau claimed three medals in Rome and Walters, Berens and Weber-Gale (I happily steer all to his fine words and web show and that second string to the bow of his early years) took home relay gold medals.
At a gala dinner attended by legends of the sport Tracy Caulkins and John Naber, Lochte, double medley world champion who kept at bay folk in shinier suits than his own shiny suit, and Soni, 100m breaststroke world champion, were named athletes of the year, while Michael Phelps, coached by Bob Bowman in Baltimore, was awarded the prize for "race of the year" for his gladiatorial role in that sizzling 100m 'fly suits and swimming battle with Milorad Cavic (SRB). Here's how that unfolded.
Lochte, coached by Gregg Troy in Florida, won five medals, four gold and one bronze, in Rome and was national 200 and 400m medley champion in a season in which Phelps opted out of medley. The Olympic champion's 400m world mark is firmly in place but Lochte got past Phelps's 200m medley world mark. The Phelps Vs Lochte medley battle will be rejoined in textile 2010.
As teammates, the medley rivals shared honours with Matt Grevers (Lake Forest, Ill.) and Nathan Adrian (Bremerton, Wash.) for the US win over Russia and France in the 4x100m freestyle. Phelps was the most successful male swimmer in Rome, retaining both the 100m and 200m butterfly crowns and claiming three relay golds and a silver in the 200m freestyle.
Soni also took silver in the 50m in Rome but in the 200m for which she became Olympic champion in 2008 she miscalculated the advantages of her suit: she ripped through the 100m at break-neck speed pace, was still well inside world-record pace at 150m, but with 20m to go found that she was towing a wooly mammoth and faded to fourth. The USC graduate coached by Dave Salo was also NCAA Champion in both the 100y and 200y breaststsroke.
The Female Race of the Year award went to Ariana Kukors (Auburn, Wash.), who raced more than 4sec inside her previous best to take the 200m medley world record to a place that will be alien for a while yet as textile-only 2010 gets underway in 2010. Kukors recently joined new training partner Katie Hoff in a pact to start textile 2010 in 2009: both will wear textile-only suits at the Duel in the Pool between the USA and a Europe Select of Britain, Germany and Italy in Manchester next month. Phelps was the founder member of that club, while Lochte says that he expects Phelps to press him into textile action. Good for them.
Sadly, despite a true will in the US and Britain to race in textile at the duel, the same commitment will not be made by others, and so some will live in 2010 and some in 2009. Perhaps the 2009 folk fear the inevitable and want a little more time to adjust. Perhaps it is just that their federation's suit sponsor hasn't yet had time to make the first textile race suits in the suit maker's existence. Whatever the answers, the conclusion must be that the duel will involved uneven competition, racing with a handicap at a meet likely to go down as the last shiny suit international of a very sad era in the long history of swimming.
The awards dinner in the States also saw Dana Vollmer (Granbury, Texas) claim the Perseverance Award and Tyler Clary (Riverside, Calif.) the Breakout Performer of the Year Award.
