Iona Anderson is a teenage Australian Olympian and one of the best backstrokers in the world. 5th at her first Olympics individually, she came home with silver and bronze medals for her relay efforts in Paris. A native of Perth, West Australia, Iona grew up focusing primarily on gymnastics and didn’t even start swimming until age 12, so her rise to be among the elites happened quickly.

Perhaps this success in the pool comes from a short term focus, not being distracted by the potential she has down the road as Iona is simply focused on this season, in particular improving her skills off the block and the walls. Iona joined us from her temporary training base in Scotland but will return soon to her main base at the WAIS as she focuses on the build toward Commonwealth Games.

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The best kicker in college swimming

Quintin McCarty, the 2025 ACC 50 freestyle champion, could be looking to sign NIL deals in two sports if the Wolfpack football staff needs any help in the kicking game. While swimmers are getting more athletic every year, we don’t often hear about swimmers with hobbies that could potentially unlock legitimate opportunities in other sports. Turns out, Quintin is pretty dangerous with the right leg. The takeaway: high performers enjoy the process of trying, failing, learning, repeating - and this might apply to their primary field (swimming) or any other activity. 

But for now, Quintin McCarty is focused on swimming, and that is great news for swim fans. Recently winning his first conference title, Quintin went personal bests in all his events at ACCs and is primed to rack up some points at NCAAs for the Pack. 

Quintin thinks he’ll still be in great swim shape for the next 20 years too. So, watch out Masters records once he’s done wreaking havoc on the college and international sprint game. 

Cal Poly just had its swimming & diving program cut. No other sport at the school was cut. The school president says it will take $25 million to reinstate the program. Current Cal Poly swimmers Jen Reiter and Sabrina Bell joined us to share about the situation they find themselves in, how it came to this, and to ask for help. While scholarships across the nation are being slashed, cutting entire programs is not what the sport needs. Plus, San Luis Obispo is awesome. The facilities are great (2x 50m pools). The team had a good year under interim staff. Would be a real shame to lose this one.

The SaveCPSwimdive campaign has begun fundraising and this is the gofundme link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-cal-poly-swim-dive Enjoy and don't forget to subscribe for weekly podcasts and daily shorts!

Chlorinated Claire Curzan comes clean about crushing kicks and coaches tricks. In her first year competing for UVA, Claire Curzan, an Olympic medalist and World Champion looks to be on peak form heading into the college championship season. Already an NCAA champion from her freshman season at Stanford, College Claire picked up right where she left off, breaking the NCAA record in the 200 backstroke in-season, building excitement for what may come at her first ACCs.

The machine at Virginia keeps rolling.

If you bought $100 of Chris Guiliano stock in ~2021 and held onto it, you’d be a very rich person right now. The man of many freestyle talents has been on a rapid rise dropping chunks of time like he’s 10 years old en route to securing 3 individual spots on the Olympic team last summer in the 50-100-200, the first U.S. man to do so since the legend Matt Biondi. Under the radar, Chris developed at Notre Dame, but following the sanctions on the program is now a Texas Longhorn and already among the all-time top 10 performers at UT after his first dual meets. Scary for what’s to come for Chris Guiliano as he says he wants to be the best freestyler in the world. Hard to bet against this guy now. We’re bullish

Fresh Wolfpack faces. Same Wolfpack speed. Leah Shackley and Erica Pelaez have been racing each other for a few years already wearing American flags on their cap. Now they are in college on the same team and thriving.

Backstroke prowess runs deep in Raleigh, so it’s no surprise these backstroke standouts found their way to join the bearded baron Braden Holloway to etch their names in NC State lore, but both have skills beyond backstroke and have already shown through the dual meet season they are key contributors for the Pack this championship season. 

Fresh off of a Dual Meet Attendance Record and in season best times, Camille Spink and Josephine Fuller of the University of Tennessee join us for a pre-championship season update. After a tragic start to the 2023-2024 season with the loss of Coach Matt Kredich’s son, the team battled through various ups and downs, finishing fourth overall at the NCAA championship.

This season, the Volunteer women are more united than ever, as they enter SECs and NCAAs with bigger goals than just attendance records. With more highs than lows thus far, will this be the year the Volunteer women crack the top-3 at NCAAs?

Enjoy a cheerful conversation about rivals in swimming, nose clips, and swimming for something bigger than yourself.

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A Legend Among Us Simone Manual, one of the best swimmers of all-time joins us to talk about life, swimming, and giving back. An Olympic and World Champion and pioneering figure as the first black American woman to win Olympic gold in swimming, Simone has quite the CV. But she is charging on, having recently kicked off her season with some rust-busting, “off” events and is settling into her new training base in Austin with Bob Bowman.

As one of the greatest “big moment” sprinters to ever stand behind the blocks, Simone surprisingly does not identify as a sprinter. She splits time among training groups and she shares some of the methods that have helped her achieve success. We also get to hear about how Simone is using her platform to celebrate, inspire, and empower both BIPOC athletes through the Simone Manual Foundation and female athletes through her work with TOGETHXR.

This was a fun one. Enjoy and don't forget to subscribe for weekly podcasts and daily shorts!

The fastest teenager ever, Turkish distance phenom Kuzey Tuncelli is already an Olympic finalist and 2x World Junior Record holder in both the long and short course 1500m freestyles and a 2024 World Championship Bronze Medalist. What’s the secret to success this young? Kuzey Tuncelli is in love with the process.

So much so that he is learning what he can improve, like sprinting, and incorporating the learnings into his program, while also assembling a true professional support staff of coaches, doctors, and physios to maximize his huge potential. Expect this guy to be a factor come the next Olympic Games in L.A. Actually he might make a lot more noise much sooner than that.

We’re here for it. 

Friends of the pod, the Cal Bears return, this time with a World Championship Bronze medalist and an NCAA Champion in Lucas Henveaux and Robin Hanson. Both elite freestylers with Olympic experience, Lucas and Robin share insights on the ‘24-’25 edition of Cal swimming that has seen 17-straight top 2 finishes at NCAAs, an unprecedented run of success.

This year, the attention all seems to be on high profile hires and transfers at Texas and Indiana, and Cal is just fine with the attention being elsewhere. Will this be the year the streak ends? Or will Cal once again arrive in March and remind everyone they know how to get it done in championship meets?

Only time will tell, but in the meantime, enjoy a wide ranging chat with Lucas and Robin including how high pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis can take the world record to who the greatest Belgian cyclist is and how swimming could adopt golf’s handicapping system.