We miss racing, so let's reminisce!

Over the next couple weeks, we're taking you back to last summer to celebrate the success of the 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞 U.S. Team at the at 2019 FINA World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea.

Today we look at night three in Gwangju, which was highlighted by individual medals from Lilly King and Olivia Smoliga:  

Lilly King has been dominating the women’s 100-meter breaststroke since her gold medal feat at the 2016 Olympic Games against rival Yulia Efimova, and she proved her dominance once again at the 2019 FINA World Championships. King defended her world title in a time of 1:04.93 with over a half-second lead on Russia’s Efimova, who took the silver in 1:05.49. 

“I think [I was] probably thinking about the 300 and 400m breaststrokes I’ve done in practice and how bad they’ve hurt, but knowing I had the training behind it – kind of keep that in the back of my head,” King said. “Just saying ‘don’t lose’ seems to help me a lot. You’ve just got to dig down and do it. You just have to have the will to win, and I have that.”  

Also with a stellar performance was Team USA’s Olivia Smoliga, who came away with her first individual LCM world championship medal, winning bronze in the women’s 100m back. While she was disappointed her time was not as fast as she had swum earlier this year, Smoliga was thrilled to get on the podium. 

“Really excited and happy,” said Smoliga. “I think I wanted it to be faster. I’ve been faster this past year, but it’s so different when you go to meets like these. The crowd is huge… and I think the crowd actually helped me today. I could hear them the last 20 meters, so I used that to my advantage the best I could. I’ve been working on my back half. That was kind of to be controlled, built into the turn, just push that back half. We work on back half 50s all the time, and that’s just what I try to do.” 

Smoliga went on to take the 50m backstroke world championship title later in the meet.