Caeleb Dressel will get the chance to defend at least one of his individual Olympic gold medals at the 2024 Games in Paris.
Dressel won the 50-meter freestyle at U.S. Olympic swimming trials on Friday in Indianapolis, and qualified for the event at the Olympics later this summer.
It was Dressel’s second of three finals this week at trials in Indianapolis. In all three, he is the reigning Olympic champion. In the first, the 100-meter free, he finished third, earning a spot on the U.S. 4×100 relay team in Paris — but narrowly missing out on the chance to defend his gold in the individual event.
In the second of three events, though, the “splash and dash” 50 free, he sped to the wall and out-touched all competitors. Dressel finished in 21.41 seconds, 0.28 — a relative eternity in this race — ahead of Chris Giuliano, who qualified in second.
As his wife, Meghan, celebrated with their months-old baby in her arms in the stands, Dressel pumped his fist, and saluted the crowd.
His Wednesday qualification in the 100 free had felt like an equivocal conclusion to his comeback story.
This, on the other hand, felt like an emphatic one.
Dressel, now 27, won five gold medals in Tokyo. At the following summer’s world championships, he won the 14th and 15th worlds golds of his decorated career. But then, with more medals on the table, he pulled out of the meet on unspecified medical grounds. He took months off from swimming. He returned to the pool in 2023, but didn’t make the U.S. team for that summer’s worlds. All in all, he went roughly 17 months without winning a race.
But throughout 2023 and 2024, he worked his way back toward the top of his sport. He earned his first win last December. He entered trials in a good place, mentally, with a smile on his face.
He is not back to his 2019 or 2021 best. But he is going back to the Olympics.
His third and final event at trials will be the 100-meter butterfly this weekend.
