Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Sergiño Dest headline the USMNT’s strong core of U-23 players.
After losing 2-1 to Honduras on Sunday, U.S. Soccer’s under-23 men’s team failed to qualify for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan (the women’s team qualified last year).
Unlike the women’s game, the men’s Olympic tournament is an under-23 competition (technically under-24 this time after the Olympics were postponed one year due COVID-19). Because the men’s competition is considered a youth tournament, FIFA does not require clubs to release their players for international duty (for qualifying or the tournament).
For that reason, many of the best U-23 players in the world don’t participate in the Olympics and many countries don’t take soccer seriously at the tournament. It’s not anything close to the World Cup.
Americans love the Olympics, though, and we gather together every four years to watch sports we otherwise don’t care about. Evan casual American sports fans would have tuned in if the USA’s U-23 soccer team reached the semifinal or final at the Olympics — it’s another chance to win gold!
The USMNT won’t get a chance to grow its popularity during the Olympics this summer after they failed to qualify, but they could still build a strong U-23 roster for the Concacaf Nations League in June or the Gold Cup in July.
U.S. Soccer won’t be limited to 18-player rosters this summer, but I capped it at that just to demonstrate the Olympic-eligible core the USMNT has (teams can also bring three overage players to the Olympics). This squad won’t play in Tokyo, but they represent a promising future for the national team.
In her first competition since the Rio Olympics, Laurie Hernandez was in the room where it happens.
Two-time Olympic medalist Laurie Hernandez competed Saturday in her first meet since the 2016 Rio Olympics, and although the 20-year-old gymnast didn’t have a perfect day, she had a great time at the Winter Cup meet.
She finished fifth on balance beam and 11th with her floor routine — which she said, per NBC Sports, were “super watered-down routines so we could dip my toe back in the water” as she looks ahead to try to make the Tokyo Olympics team.
But watered down or not, a clear highlight of her floor routine was the medley soundtrack, which featured The Room Where It Happens from the musical Hamilton. (In For The Win’s complete ranking of Hamilton‘s songs, The Room Where It Happens landed at No. 8.)
It was fabulous, even if Hernandez is still looking to improve on it. Via USA TODAY Sports:
“There was nothing expression-wise to choreograph (because) I know that if I’m having a really good time, it’s going to just fly out of my face,” said Hernandez, who did her own choreography.
A musical theater fan, Hernandez tweeted Saturday about preparing for the day with the help of the Hamilton soundtrack, and last month, the Olympic gold and silver medalist also teased some of her choreography on TikTok.
The Olympic swimmer weighed in on discussions about athletes receiving preferential treatment for the COVID-19 vaccine.
After a challenging last 12 months plagued by the COVID-19 pandemic, swimming superstar Katie Ledecky remains hopeful.
Hopeful the Tokyo Olympics this summer will safely happen. Hopeful her preparation in trying to win up to five gold medals isn’t suffering because of the added distractions and what-ifs. Hopeful she and her fellow athletes will be able to receive COVID-19 vaccinations before the Opening Ceremony on July 23.
Ledecky said she’s training as if the Games will take place. And at this point, she really doesn’t have much of a choice, even when it’s sometimes impossible to ignore all the speculation less than five months out.
But optimistic outlook aside, the six-time Olympic medalist has a firm stance when it comes to debates about athletes jumping the line for a COVID-19 vaccine ahead of more vulnerable people.
“We’re waiting in line,” 23-year-old Ledecky said Wednesday during a Zoom call with reporters. “I feel pretty strongly that we all have to get it when it’s our turn, and I really hope that that’s soon for all of us, not just athletes.
“And I hope that we’ll be back soon by the time — I mean, hopefully before Olympic trials, but definitely by Tokyo as well. I haven’t heard anything on timing of any of that. I’ll get it when I’m told that I can get it.”
Katie Ledecky nearly lapping her competitors during the 1,500m freestyle final of the 2017 FINA World Championships. (Al Bello/Getty Images)
The International Olympic Committee is not requiring athletes get vaccinations before competing — though it’s encouraging them to do so if the vaccine is available but hasn’t provided any indication that it will help them jump the line, USA TODAY Sports reported. The World Health Organization is continuing to work with the IOC and Japanese officials, and in January, it said Olympic athletes should not receive preferential treatment, especially ahead of healthcare workers and more vulnerable populations.
The U.S. Olympic Committee isn’t pushing for American athletes to get priority access to a vaccine either, but it has been in contact with the White House about the situation, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.
Responses from 20 Olympic countries surveyed by The Wall Street Journal indicate that many nations are willing to risk public blowback by at least seeking to advocate on behalf of athletes’ vaccination.
Following early shutdowns in the U.S. last spring, Ledecky and four-time Olympic medalist Simone Manuel swam together in a backyard pool under coach Greg Meehan before their training at Stanford resumed in the summer.
Their current COVID-19 protocols include being tested three times a week, and only members of the same household are allowed to swim in the same lanes during practice, said Ledecky, who lives alone.
Ahead of the Olympic trials in June, Ledecky said she’s “in a good spot right now” in terms of training. Looking to add to her already stunning collection of Olympic hardware, she’s aiming to qualify in the 200-meter, 400-meter, 800-meter and 1,500-meter freestyle events. (The latter is Ledecky’s most dominant event — she holds the world record — and it’s the first time women can compete in it at the Games.) She also wants to qualify for the 4×200-meter freestyle relay.
And while she hopes she’ll have the opportunity to be vaccinated prior to the Olympics, she said she doesn’t think she’d consider skipping them if she’s not.
“Whether we all have the vaccine or not, we are gonna have to do the exact same things in Tokyo — the mask wearing, the distancing the testing,” Ledecky said about the hypothetical situation. “Even if you get the vaccine and you have a positive test, you’re still able to spread the virus potentially. So there are lots of questions in play like that.”
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For the TYR Pro Swim Series event in San Antonio next week, she said she will travel for the first time in about a year, and with the rules USA Swimming has established, she feels these events can be done safely.
Ledecky — who turned pro in 2018 after her sophomore season at Stanford and graduated last fall — also expressed confidence in Tokyo organizers to keep athletes safe with protocols, like restricting their movements in the Olympic Village.
“They’re talking as though they’re planning for the fact that not very many athletes may be vaccinated,” Ledecky said. “I hope that many athletes are vaccinated by then, and I hope U.S. athletes are vaccinated by then.”
A giggling toddler is a hard thing to ignore! Paralympic track-and-field champion Blake Leeper was drawn to the joyful giggles coming from the doctor’s office hallway. Leeper left his own prosthetic fitting appointment to see what was going on.
That’s when he watched two-year-old KJ take his first steps with his new prosthetic foot.
Watch the moment Leeper got on the floor to cheer on KJ at Scott Sabolich Prosthetics office in Oklahoma City.
“You’re doing great!” Leeper says to KJ, walking towards him. “You’re doing awesome!”
Leeper beat Oscar Pistorius’s T43 400 meter Paralympic World record in 2017.
We spoke to the Olympics star about appearing on the MTV reality series.
There have been a handful of college and pro athletes who appeared on MTV’s reality competition show The Challenge, including former Chattanooga tight end Fessy Shafaat and ex-arena football player Zach Nichols.
But it’s safe to say there hasn’t been an athlete with the pedigree and fame of Lolo Jones, who has competed in both the Summer Olympics (in 2012, she finished fourth in the 100m hurdles) and the Winter Games (as a brakewoman for the United States bobsled team in 2014).
Jones spoke to For The Win ahead of the season premiere (Wednesday, Dec. 9 at 8 p.m. ET on MTV) all about how she got onto the series and what she did to train while in the middle of preparing for the 2021 Olympics (this interview has been condensed and edited).
Lolo is no stranger to competition but this is a different ballgame.
What’s it like to go from Champs vs. Pros, playing for charity and now you’re participating in a game for money you can take home?
For me, it was fun. At the end of the day, it was nice to be able to compete because everything this year was shut down for me, with the Summer Olympics being postponed and then I tried to go to bobsled and they had delays in their season. I was like, man, I want to compete in something. The whole time I’m on the show, people are like, “oh my gosh, it’s a million dollars!” and I was like, “I’m just here to compete.”
How did it all come about? Did you approach MTV or vice versa?
We’ve had conversations in the past after Champs vs. Pros. I talked to the vets when I was on the show, and they were like, “This is what’s different or the same.” The athlete in me says, “Hmm, I wonder how much harder the competitions were on the regular season.” The vets would say, “If we did this (challenge) on the real season, this height would be higher.”
Did you see those differences?
They definitely weren’t lying about the heights. They’re doubly or triply higher for sure. That was cool. The one thing is on Champs vs. Pros, we filmed a whole season in a condensed amount of time. We shot really long hours and days because we were doing multiple episodes in a day. The benefit was you could stay in hotel rooms as opposed to 40 people in one house.
Did you watch any seasons since Champs vs. Pros? If so, did it help you?
The Olympics got shut down for me. So I was like all of America, just trapped and watching TV nonstop. After you binge everything on other platforms, The Challenge was the only show coming out fresh. I wondered if they were still filming in the middle of the pandemic, so it sparked my curiosity.
Once you knew you were going on, how did you prepare?
I started switching my workouts to longer distance, endurance stuff. I’m a sprinter naturally. I don’t typically run anything longer than a mile on a regular basis. From watching the show, I knew there were long-distance challenges and the finals was like a marathon or ultramarathon. My track runners were laughing at me because I would do track workouts and then say “Give me a math problem or puzzle!” between rounds. That’s very similar to what you do on challenges, you’ll do an obstacle and then a puzzle or a math equation or something. They were all laughing at me before I left.
That’s actually smart given the format these days!
When I was on the show, I told people there how I trained. They told me they didn’t train like that. Most of them thought it was a unique concept.
Without giving too much away, did that help you?
I think what hurt me in this preparation, I was literally training for the Olympics coming into The Challenge. I tried my best, but in reality, I only had about two or three weeks where I could do proper Challenge training and I will say this: with any competition, you need months, not weeks.
Did your name recognition help with politics in the house? Were they intimidated to face you?
I was nervous it was going to hurt me just because it was the first time an Olympic athlete was on a real season of The Challenge and that was going to put a target on my back. (Competitors) told me they pulled up my track races and looked at all the aggressive faces I make when I’m running, they were like, “Oh my gosh, this is who we have to compete against.”
In the most recent season of the show, you had to win an elimination and a “red skull” to make the final. This season, it’s similar with gold skulls. Was it weird to deal with that strategy where you have to go into elimination?
I mean, I honestly was like, wow, way to welcome an Olympic athlete in and turn everything into gold because that’s what my career is based on, fighting for gold medals. I think they did that for me (laughs).
I was on Big Brother, I was on Champs vs Pros, so I felt well-versed for the politics and physicality The Challenge requires. This season, it was multiplied by five. You really did have to be a mastermind in both physicality and politics.
What are you up to now? Training for the bobsled team in 2021, right?
I’m at training center right now, we just had team trials, that was a grueling competition. We’re waiting to get clearance to go to Europe and compete.
How are your prospects for the 2021 Games?
I made the national bobsled team, so that was a huge step. I was really worried about that because I was losing my strength and weight on The Challenge. Bobsled requires me to be really strong and heavy, and as I mentioned before, The Challenge requires me to be lighter for more endurance. I was nervous about my preparation for team trials, but I’m glad I was able to make that team coming off a reality show. For me, that was a huge accomplishment.
The Olympics are coming to Los Angeles in eight years.
The Summer Olympics are coming to Los Angeles in eight years, and on Tuesday, LA28 unveiled a series of Olympic emblems created by various Olympic athletes, celebrities and Los Angeles locals.
According to LA28, the list of “creators” includes Adam Rippon, Aidan Kosaka, Alex Israel, Alex Morgan, Allyson Felix, Billie Eilish, Bobby Hundreds, Chantel Navarro, Chaz Bojórquez, Chloe Kim, Dr. Woo, Ezra Frech, Gabby Douglas, Ibtihaj Muhammad, Jamal Hill, Jorge “El Joy” Alvarez, Lauren “Lolo” Spencer, Lex Gillette, Lilly Singh, Michael Johnson, Oz Sanchez, Rachel Sumekh, Reese Witherspoon, Scout Bassett, Simone Manuel and Steven Harrington.
Some of the finished products are…. fairly bizarre, even for Olympic logos.
Team USA pulled off what seemed like an impossible victory in the men’s 4×100-meter relay 12 years ago.
It was, undeniably, the greatest swimming relay leg of all time and surely one of the best in-race comebacks the sport has ever seen.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Team USA’s men’s 4×100-meter relay squad downed their trash-talking French rivals to deliver what seemed like an impossible victory late in the race and helped Michael Phelps claim one of his eight gold medals that summer. It wasn’t the only race that summer Phelps almost lost in his quest to break Mark Spitz’s record of seven golds in a single Games, but because it was a relay, the finish was entirely out of his control.
On August 11, 2008 at China’s famous Water Cube, Jason Lezak had the most incredible swim of his career, and it’s one the swimming world will never forget.
“That one race made my career and kept me swimming for another four years, and I’m still able to do swimming things because of that,” Lezak told For The Win in 2019.
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August 11, 2008: Men’s Olympic 4x100m Freestyle Relay Final in Beijing. Phelps’ 2nd of 8 golds. @JasonLezak w/ best final relay leg ever 🇺🇸@DanHicksNBC & @RowdyGaines on the call
“The Americans? We're going to smash ‘em. That's what we came here for.”- France’s Alain Bernard pic.twitter.com/PEih5VCjIJ
— This Day In Sports Clips (@TDISportsClips) August 11, 2020
So without the 2020 Olympics happening in Tokyo this summer — the closing ceremony would have been Sunday — we’re looking back at this inconceivable moment in swimming history.
Then 32 years old, Lezak was the oldest swimmer on the U.S. men’s team, of which he was also the captain, and was anchoring the sprint relay. That meant he’d be going against France’s Alain Bernard for the final 100 meters — the same Alain Bernard who said:
“The Americans? We’re going to smash them. That’s what we came here for.”
Phelps led off the relay, did his job and gave Team USA a .40-second lead over the French while breaking the 100-meter freestyle American record at 47.51 seconds.
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Then Garrett Weber-Gale and Cullen Jones dove in for the next two legs. But by the time Jones hit the wall for his exchange with Lezak, the French had a solid lead that everyone expected Bernard would increase. And he did.
Going into that moment, Lezak was just worried about leaving the block a tad early and getting disqualified. Via NBC Sports’ 2018 piece celebrating the anniversary of the relay:
“Emotions going all over the place,” Lezak said. “I was so anxious to try to catch [Bernard] I actually thought in my head that I left [the starting block] early and I would get DQed. I believe my reaction time was .03, which was really close. I’m sure all the coaches were freaking out.”
It was actually .04, second-best reaction of the 24 relay exchanges among the eight nations. Lezak avoided disqualification by eight hundredths of a second.
“Swimming down the first length [of the pool], trying to get all my thoughts out of my head,” Lezak continued. “As I did that, Bernard was on my left, and I breathed to my right. Never once did I look over to see where he was. I got to the 50, flipped and pushed off, and had another thought. Oh no, this guy increased his lead on me.”
By the time they turned at the 50-meter mark, Bernard’s lead over Lezak was almost a full body length. It was remarkably unlikely that a 32-year-old veteran swimmer would be able to make up so much ground in one length, and against the former 100-meter world holder no less.
Even with 25 meters to go, although Lezak was catching up, he was still down about half a body length. There was absolutely no way he was going to pass Bernard for the win, right?
Well, Lezak out-touched Bernard by .08 seconds for the world record and made history in more ways than one.
And no matter how many times we watch it, fully aware of the result, there will always be chills.
“I absolutely believe that if they didn’t have each other, it would have been so much more difficult.”
One particularly harrowing practice set stands out to Katie Ledecky and Simone Manuel when they think about training in a two-lane backyard pool for three months this year. Their coach, Greg Meehan, called it “Death by Relay.”
The two American Olympians — who combine for 10 Olympic medals, seven gold — alternated who was swimming at an as-fast-as-possible speed, and when one touched the wall from her 25-yard lane, the other dove in.
“It was just a burner of a swim set that was actually quite fun and something very different for us,” 23-year-old Ledecky said. “But it was super challenging for both of us because we were both really racing.”
What constituted “different” at this point was relative for Ledecky and Manuel, who recently spoke with For The Win while promoting BIC’s Soleil Sensitive Advanced “Game On” campaign. Sure, it was a brutal set they had never tried before, and one Meehan described as “definitely one of the hardest things they’ve done.”
But they were also in a family’s Atherton, California backyard — a stark contrast to Stanford’s mammoth Avery Aquatic Center, where they usually train. And any challenge he threw at them was compounded by their rigorous training routine, necessary to remain two of the best swimmers on the planet, vanishing because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. They were practicing in a pool half as long as what they’re used to and doing it alone, but at least together, rather than with a couple dozen others.
For “Death by Relay,” Ledecky — a dominant distance swimmer with world records in the 1,500-meter freestyle, 800-meter freestyle and 400-meter freestyle — started with a 500-yard swim, and her distances gradually decreased. Meanwhile, Manuel — the reigning world champion and American record holder in the 50-meter and 100-meter freestyle with world records in three relays — stuck with shorter swims. It actually mimicked a relay, and the amount of rest they got between each swim was entirely dependent on how fast the other could go that day.
Alternating, they couldn’t speak to each other during the entire set. But Meehan said when they rested, they would cheer for the other as they tried to beat a collective goal time.
“We’re in quarantine, we’re training, but we’re not competing, and that’s something that I think both of us really value,” 24-year-old Manuel said. “[Meehan] wanted to make it some sort of competition. He gave us a goal time to beat, so that made it fun and challenging.”
And for three months, like they did during the “Death by Relay” set, Ledecky and Manuel relied on each other for much-needed support and motivation while training in a 25-yard, two-lane backyard pool, Meehan said. They often lean on each other, he noted, but it was especially necessary during a uniquely challenging time in their careers.
Swimmers thrive with routines, and when theirs imploded, Meehan said it took some time for them to process a new reality, which included 2020 being drastically different than what they planned.
“There were some emotional highs and lows, but I absolutely believe that if they didn’t have each other, it would have been so much more difficult,” said Meehan, the Stanford women’s coach who’s also the head coach of the U.S. Olympic women’s team.
They, like so many other swimmers and Olympic hopefuls, were left scrambling in March for a place to practice as pools and facilities nationwide shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic — all while still expecting the Games in July. When Stanford’s pool closed, they turned to a country club for a couple days before that, too, was shut down.
They were constantly trying to problem solve and get creative. Luckily for them, Meehan said he realized he had a connection to a family — who they opted not to name for privacy reasons — with a two-lane backyard pool, starting blocks included.
“When I think on the fact that we were able to not have an interruption in training because of this gracious family that allowed us to swim in their backyard for months, and still be safe by social distancing, it’s a blessing,” said Manuel, who became the first African-American woman to win an individual gold medal in the Olympics in the 2016 Rio Games (100-meter freestyle).
Normally, they’d train with Stanford’s team most of the time and have up to three sessions a week just the two of them, Meehan said.
But that became their full-time setup for three months until Stanford’s pool reopened in June. As a pair, they had up to nine sessions a week as uncertainty about the 2020 Games loomed. Ledecky said it was her longest break from training in a 50-meter pool in years.
But they were more fortunate than a lot of swimmers, some of whom didn’t have a full-length pool or access to a pool at all, which Meehan said was the case for many of his local swimmers.
“Watching their friendship develop over the last couple years,” he said, “especially as they’ve been professional athletes, just how much respect they have for each other and how much they lean on each other without having to talk about it all the time — I think there’s just a quiet understanding that they’re going through similar experiences as elite-level athletes.”
That included losing the social aspect of swimming, like practicing with 20 or more people most of the time and maintaining conversations squeezed into seconds-long pauses on the wall. They lost the collective energy and the team camaraderie, which is essential in a sport that involves staring at the bottom of a pool for hours every day.
Being isolated most of the time because of social distancing and then practicing with only one other person “weighed on them heavily,” Meehan added. Eventually, the anguish of their rigid routines evaporating only a few months before the Olympics’ original start date subsided.
However, that was only because the International Olympic Committee decided in late March to push everything back a year, which Meehan said was initially a relief. But that feeling quickly dissipated as they tried to digest going from being three months away from the Games to 15 months, basically restarting their Olympic-year training regimen.
“We’re fierce competitors,” Ledecky said. “And we know we have that same ambition and similar drive, and it was nice to have somebody that could hold you accountable. We both knew we were going through the same thing, and that’s more of a mental thing at that point, especially early on.
“Once the postponement was made and there was so much uncertainty, we had to stay upbeat and keep each other upbeat. And that was critical in what we’re trying to do.”
Their relationship has evolved “quite a bit” over the years, said Meehan, who coached them on Stanford’s team before they both turned pro in 2018 after leading the Cardinal to consecutive NCAA championships. (Manuel earned her degree in 2019, while Ledecky plans to complete hers in December, ironically earlier than planned because of the pandemic.)
They were first teammates and competitors who sometimes swam similar NCAA events, but after they went pro, Meehan said he saw their relationship beyond the pool develop as they realized “we’re going to be stronger together if we can help each other through this.”
Ledecky’s and Manuel’s personalities are “totally different,” he explained, but they bonded because of their “laser focus” and the “off-the-charts” work ethic that elevated them to the top among the world’s most elite swimmers. That friendship and common mindset helped push them forward in that two-lane backyard pool.
“The mental piece of it is just as important as the physical piece of staying in the water,” Ledecky said.
When their focused blurred, their motivation lacked or they struggled to adjust mentally and physically while not knowing when their next competition might be, they looked to each other to stay on course. Though they didn’t really have a choice.
“It was definitely hard to really be motivated with everything that’s been going on in the world,” Manuel said. “But just knowing that I could show up at practice and know I had a teammate like Katie come to practice and encourage me or push me to get out of the funk that I was in — or for me to do the same for her — was really helpful. And it allowed us to continue to work toward the goals that we have.”
And the ability to expand those already lofty Olympic goals is part of the silver lining.
Now, the pair is back to training at Stanford with about eight people while Meehan said most of his swimmers are still scattered around the country. They were “on track to be great this summer,” he explained, but the added year of training offers them a chance at a do-over Olympics year to improve on everything from race strategy to stroke mechanics.
It’s an opportunity, not a setback, to perfect details that they otherwise would have run out of time to do, and they’re not dwelling on what this year could have been for them professionally, Ledecky said.
“Yes the Games are postponed, but that doesn’t mean that the goals that I have on my list have to be crossed off,” Manuel said, talking about how she and Ledecky are first focused on the U.S. Olympic Trials.
“I still want to make the Olympic team. I still want to go and win all gold medals. So whether the Olympics comes in 2021 or not until 2024, I’m going to keep pressing.”
But as it turns out, the five-time Olympic gold medalist can perform at least one truly astonishing trick in the pool too.
Monday on Instagram, Ledecky posted a video of herself swimming one length of the pool (likely 50 meters but possibly 50 yards). No big deal, right?
The catch was she had a cup of chocolate milk balancing on her head, and she made it the whole way without it falling off. It seems ridiculously challenging, but Ledecky, of course, somehow made it look super easy.
Even if this is a new Got Milk? ad for the 23-year-old distance swimmer, it’s still remarkably impressive. She made it all the way to the other end — with the help of a snorkel, a common training tool — and took a sip while resting on the wall.
In a video posted to her Instagram story, Ledecky laughed while explaining: “I was bracing my core so hard because I can’t move. I have to stay still.
