Kings Of Perseverance Part II: Vintage Podium's Pure-Sprint Prep Prayers Answered
SOS Awards 2024: The Paris 2024 Olympic 50m freestyle podium of Cam McEvoy, Ben Proud and Florent Manaudou was the oldest ever, at 31 - and their pioneering stand for the mature athlete spoke to the wisdom of "less is more". Here's what that means in their own words
For the first time in history, the average age of the men's Olympic 50m freestyle podium thundered into the thirty-somethings, at 31 years, courtesy of Australia's Cameron McEvoy, at 30 (and a touch over 2 months), Britain's Ben Proud, 29 (just over a month shy of turning 30), and France's Florent Manaudou, 33 (and 8 months).
To the closest month, that averages out a 31, which beat the previous record of 29.52, set at the Rio 2016 Games when gold made Anthony Ervin the oldest men's Olympic swimming champion, at 35, Manaudou was heading towards his 26th birthday when claiming silver four years after his own gold at London 2012, and the new champion's USA teammate Nathan Adrian was approaching 28.
In part one of our look at the emperors of dash as kings of perseverance, we noted the shift in McEvoy's program beyond the years of development, junior progress and senior status as one of the fastest 100m men the world has ever seen:
Craig Lord
McEvoy was not alone in approaching the 50m sprint in Paris through preparation that departed from the way he had trained in readiness for the 2012, 2016 and 2020ne Olympics.
Age is just a number, many say, but beyond the record average already noted, it also counts among the reasons why and how the three men who made the medals in Paris train as they do. Add this... and how some of what they do coincides with adjustments in the preparation of the women's 50 and 100m champion in Paris, Sarah Sjöström, who shares the pool and some aspects of prep with Proud and Manaudou when they are and have been based at the Gloria centre in Turkey. Sjöström was one of our Queens of Perseverance as part of our SOS Awards 2024:
Craig Lord
Worth recalling, in that context, the wisdom shared by fellow Swedish sprinter Therese Alshammar a few cycles back when describing what 'age' meant to her.
We'll leave the detail of that to a day when we dip into the archive and consider why Alshammar, who is still passing on her wisdom to next wavers these days, was ahead of her time. To go alongside our feature on McEvoy, here's a look at what all three men said in Paris in response to my invitation for them to explain what talk and media mentions of "swimmers who hardly ever swim in training" actually meant.
When Less is More...
