Introduction

Ryan Lochte and I first met in December of 1997 at the Holiday Classic swim meet in Gainesville. I had just moved to Orlando from Louisville. Ryan, originally from upstate New York, had moved to Daytona in 1996 when his dad took the head coaching job at the Daytona Beach YMCA swim team.

Little did we know the two of us would return to Gainesville in 2002 as freshman roommates for the University of Florida swim team.

With Orlando and Daytona being only an hour apart, Ryan and I ended up at most club meets together, always repeating annually at the Holiday Classic in Gainesville which was our “fast” meet of the year.

By 1998, when we were 14-years old, I was six feet tall, and Ryan was probably five feet nine or ten inches. My frame was broader than his and while neither of us had much muscle mass, I could clearly support more than him.

As a result of being taller and slightly stronger, I was faster. That is right, I can claim the title of saying that I have bested Ryan Lochte in multiple swim races. The caveat, it was in another millennium. The last time I beat Ryan was at the December 1999 Holiday Classic in Gainesville. The same meet at which we met two years earlier, and in the same pool that our friendship would forge forever as Gators.

At the time, when I lost to Ryan, I assumed I would be back on top by the next season. But that next victory never came. As time went on, I realized how much my size served to my advantage at a young age, and that, in the end, technique prevails over strength.

After December competitions, swimmers typically had a short break and then got back into the water for the infamous holiday training. I say “infamous” because coaches know athletes have nothing to do but swim, sleep, and eat. Therefore, coaches plan for a heavy load of endurance work (i.e., a lot of yardage) in a short period of time.

The long-term impact of holiday training is to improve the aerobic threshold of the swimmers. The short-term impact is exhaustion until the yardage decreases. As a result, coaches like to schedule competitions early in the new year to gauge how tired their swimmers are after holiday training.

Nobody is expected to come anywhere close to their best times coming off holiday training, but in February of 2000 at the Rosen Aquatic Center (f/k/a the YMCA Aquatic Center) on International Drive in Orlando, Ryan proved that theory wrong. Even though he was supposed to be exhausted, Ryan dropped significant amounts of time and qualified for Junior Nationals, which was the next time standard threshold to achieve.

For example, in December 1999 Ryan and I had just swum the 200 SCY Freestyle around the same time in ~1:45.00. Closely a best time for both of us. Three months later, Ryan dropped two seconds and goes 1:42.81, and then a month later at Junior Nationals he dropped another second to go 1:41.77.
He also swam the 400 IM in February in a 4:06, when the Junior cut was 4:10. And, three years later in March 2003, he placed 3rd at the NCAA Championships in the 400 IM as a Freshman with a 3:41 which was his first and only National Age Group record since he was still 18-years old.

The point is most people think of Ryan’s career “breaking out” in the Summer of 2004 with the Olympics. For me though, this meet in 2000 was his first true sign of greatness, and it highlights the importance of patience in adolescent careers. In 2000, he was a 15-year-old sophomore in high school, and his body was finally developing muscle while growing into his adult frame. He probably weighed 160 pounds at the time, and he would eventually compete in the Olympics at 190 pounds. The holiday training did not drain him, it gave him the muscle that his technique needed all along.

Every sport has athletes that come on at a young age and are dubbed “the next big star”. In swimming, Michael Phelps was setting National Age Group Records at 8 and making the Olympic Final at 15. But for every Phelps, you have a Meena, or a Chas Morton, or a Clay Kirkland. Trust me, I was never as fast as Morton or Kirkland, but we can all claim we were faster than Ryan Lochte before high school. Which may have been our ultimate downfall, and Ryan’s upside. When we were focused on solely swimming as fast as possible, Ryan was still slip-and-sliding across the shower floors and blowing ring bubbles in the deep end. In one instance, Ryan almost missed winning a high school state championship swimming final, because he was in the gym next door to the pool playing pick-up basketball.

For years Ryan’s parents, who happened to be his coaches, focused on having fun with good technique, and nothing else. This was their focus because they did not want Ryan to get burned out from the sport at a young age, and they also knew that when his muscle mass started to form, his technique would carry him across the water faster than anyone else in the pool.

His parents were patient. His parents were right.

Exhibit 1 - A Visual of Times for Elliot Meena, Ryan Lochte, and Michael Phelps in the 200 SCY Freestyle

Note: times before 2000 are approximated. Also, I think Ryan and I swam in this meet five years in a row (1997-2001), and then a few more times in college. PS - I finished my swimming career at the University of Florida in 2006, so do judge too much on my falloff...

Exhibit 2 - University of Florida Men’s Swimming 5 x 100 Time Trial
September 28, 2002

Speaking of my freshman year at Florida, I found this exhibit recently. It was September 28, 2002, and we had a few weeks of training under our belt by then, so the coaches decided to line everyone up to race in 5 x 100 SCY events. One of each stroke plus a 100 IM for a combined 500-yard time.

To make it simple, they grouped everyone alphabetically with roughly 4 in a heat since there were 26 men competing. That means my heat was Kellam, King, Lochte, Meena. Yup, I was right next to Ryan who ended up beating me by 28 seconds, enough time to lap me by a 50. Kellam was on the other side of me, and he placed 2nd overall. Talk about an eye-opening welcome into the big leagues. The only thing I won that day was stepping up on the blocks.

For what it is worth, I swam a meet in 2021 at 37 years old. I went 55.99 in the 100 Fly. 58.41 in the 100 IM. And 22.66 in the 50 Free.

Close, But Not Close Enough

All young swimmers dream of being an Olympian. It is the pinnacle of the sport. You assume success is a gold medal, nothing less.

As a kid growing up in Kentucky, my dreams were very much alive. I was winning state championships, and I even came in second to Michael Phelps in 1994 at a Dynamo meet in Atlanta. Being a tall kid has its advantages in sports.

But after moving to Florida, I became a smaller fish in a bigger pond. So, when Lochte started to beat me at 15-years old, I soon realized my Olympic dreams were going to remain dreams and never become a reality. If there are only two spots on a team, and you are getting beat by a guy in the next town, and Phelps was just getting going, then your chances might as well be 0%.

But I did not take a negative mindset to that reality because it is important to have realistic expectations as an athlete. Sure, maybe I could have still been the Olympian. Maybe I could have been famous. From a caliber perspective, I had literally the best in the world coaching me and training beside me. If I was meant to be an Olympian, I was certainly in the right place to do it.

But I viewed it differently. My chances of becoming an Olympian were small, but Ryan’s were huge. At this point, it was 2002 and I was living in the same room as him. I saw how tough he trained on a diet of pixie sticks and soda. He was goofy but competitive. He once almost lapped me by a 100 in the 1,000 our freshman year, and I went 9:50.

Yes, I still wanted to swim fast for myself. But, from a team perspective, Ryan’s career was more important than mine, so I took a sideline role of support in whatever way I could.

I have now known Ryan for nearly 25 years, and on a full spectrum of ups and downs, his career gave it all. A true rollercoaster of emotions, and it was a thrill to witness.

From the high school duels to college records to Olympic medals, I have been very fortunate to sit front row to one of the greatest swimming careers in history. A career that has won everything there is to win and defied expectations of what it means to be old in the sport.

I will never know what it feels like to be an Olympian, but it is a great feeling to watch your friend solidify his Olympic status, and quite honestly become your swimming hero in the process. That may not have been my dream, but it is a reality for which I am forever grateful.

And if it had not been for the patience of his parents, it may never have happened. If they had forced Ryan to “tap” into his potential at 10 or 12 years old, he may not have been ready because his body and mind were not speaking the same language yet. The right approach is the patient approach, which is to wait for your body to talk to you. In my opinion, Ryan’s body started talking to him in February 2000.

And that is the message to parents. You should not plan for your child being as fast as Michael Phelps from a young age. However, with patience and a commitment to focusing on what matters at certain stages of development, you can have a child be as fast as Ryan Lochte at a collegiate and adult age.

Signing-Off (for now…)

Even though I accepted my Olympic fate early on, I still had goals as a swimmer. I wanted to continue to swim in college and I accomplished that goal by swimming for the University of Florida Gators, finishing as Captain my senior year. Swimming for UF from 2002 - 2006 was absolutely the highlight of my career, and it certainly did not hurt that UF won a national football and basketball title while I was there.

The connections I made as a Gator have literally taken me across the globe to five continents (hopefully seven, one day). I have been to three summer Olympics (2008, 2012, 2016) and witnessed Lochte and Phelps win gold medals in each. I have also been to a Winter Olympics (2018) with a former Gator swimmer; I met up with some Gator swimmers in Sydney after skydiving over Byron Bay; and ran with the bulls in Pamplona with another Gator.

Post college, though, another goal of mine forged. I always saw swimming from a statistical perspective and my goal was to introduce this new lens for which to view swimming and other Metric Sports. I have no doubt my swimming career accelerated my math skills, and I wanted to be the one to introduce the skills to think in a calculated way, which is why I put together the MeenaMethod.

And on that note, this will be my last post (for a while). Over the past eight years, I feel I have addressed every topic I wanted to address as it relates to the MeenaMethod framework and Metric Sports. I have always loved the stats of swimming, and I truly do believe these relative lenses are applicable. That is why I went through the effort of outlining the math. But for now, it is time to put these publications to rest as I have said everything I needed to say. I think…

Thank you for reading. - Elliot

Footnotes

Author: Elliot Meena

Published: May 27, 2022

Sources: USA Swimming

Notes:

SCY: Short-Course-Yards (i.e., a 25-yard pool)
“Yardage” is slang for distance