[ Photo Courtesy: Mike Lewis / ISL ]
>> Linnea Mack (left) & Ali DeLoof of the DC Trident
No Tokyo, No Problem: The Non-Olympians Turning Heads in ISL Season 3 BY MATTHEW DE GEORGE
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very season of the International Swimming League has carried a notable first. The inaugural campaign in 2019 was an experiment in every aspect. The 2020 season brought expansion and a bubble amid a global pandemic. The question this year would be about the Olympics. Much as the league might aspire to displace the Olympics’ primacy in swimming, you won’t find a swimmer who's yet in that mindset. How ISL would fit into the schedule of athletes recovering, reloading or resting was an open question for ISL Season 3. The role of the league as a force multiplier, keeping in the headlines athletes who’d thrust themselves into the mainstream for the first time this summer, was one obvious possibility. But ISL has also revealed another dynamic, beyond reminding those other than swimming diehards that Caeleb Dressel and Lilly King aren’t just dominant racers once every four years. The league is giving swimmers who missed the Tokyo festivities a way to showcase their abilities on the global stage and to make money doing it. The most spectacular embodiment of this phenomenon was Coleman Stewart, who set the world record in the men’s 100 backstroke in his debut for the Cali Condors with a time of 48.33 seconds. “I had absolutely no idea what to expect,” Stewart said then.
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“This was a complete shock. I was not expecting to go best times, really. Obviously super happy with it.” Stewart missed out on Tokyo with just a so-so Olympic Trials. He was 10th in the 100 back in Omaha, fourth in the 100 butterfly and eighth in the 100 freestyle, just missing a relay spot. Stewart is hardly alone in leading the pack in ISL without having swum in Tokyo. Through six matches in ISL Season 3, with every team having swum at least twice, the fastest times in no fewer than eight events belong to nonOlympians. Kelshi Dahlia (who was an Olympian in 2016) leads the way in the women’s 100 fly and 200 fly. Her Cali Condors teammate Beata Nelson owns the top time in the 200 back and 100 individual medley, among a slew of top-10 times. Ali DeLoof of the DC Trident owns the top time in the women’s 50 back; she’s second in the 100 back to LA Current’s Ingrid Wilm. Women’s backstroke is particularly fascinating: Seven of the top 12 in the 100 and seven of the top 10 in the 50 are swimmers absent from Tokyo. On the men’s side, beyond Stewart, Nicholas Santos owns the top time in the 50 fly. Two other notables: Marco Orsi
