She's Still Got It

Rose blasted out a 33.21 on the first 50 and then nudged ahead of her teenage competitor on the second 50. On a video of the race, one of the swimmers Rose coaches at Alpha says, as she charges for the final wall, “Oh, my God, she got it.”

Rose’s time, 1:09.82, was nearly half a second under the Olympic trials standard of 1:10.29. She was also a few tenths off her lifetime best, a time she’d swum at the 2002 Pan Pacific Championships when she was 24. By the end of the weekend, she had picked up a second trials cut, in the 200 breaststroke.

Those swims made her the oldest recorded swimmer to ever qualify for the meet. She also joined an exclusive club: In the past 20 years, a total of just seven swimmers older than 40, including Rose, have qualified for the U.S. Olympic trials. (USA Swimming’s data is incomplete regarding the ages of swimmers in the early- and mid-20th century.)
The previous record-holder for oldest swimmer to qualify for trials, five-time Olympian Dara Torres, made it in 2012 at the age of 45. 

Colorado Masters Swimming member and three-time Olympian Susan von der Lippe (née Rapp), Torres, and three-time Olympian Janet Evans qualified in 2008 at 42, 41, and 41 years old, respectively. In 2012, North Carolina Masters Swimming member Erika Braun (née Bass) and Novaquatics Masters member Steve West, both of whom were 40, qualified. Anthony Ervin, who won gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics at age 35, was 40 when he vied for a spot at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Swimming fans will recognize some, if not all, of the names on this list. Von der Lippe, Torres, Evans, and Ervin all won multiple Olympic medals. Braun first qualified for trials in 1988 as a teenager and went on to swim for two years at the University of Georgia. West missed making the Olympic team by one spot in 1996 but earned a silver at the Pan American Games in 1999. So it’s tempting to conclude that legends never die, as Babe Ruth famously said. 

Marquette University exercise scientist Sandra Hunter, who studies gender and age in sports performance, agreed that the swimmers’ elite backgrounds were likely a factor in their qualifying for trials at an older age. “They all knew the system and had done the training,” Hunter says. “They knew what was needed in order to qualify.” 

Yet the question remains: Why aren’t more Olympians of years past racking up trials cuts? 

Swimming didn’t become a professional sport until the early 1990s, a fact that prohibited many former elite athletes from training full-time beyond their college years. In the past 20 years, however, more professional athletes have been able to make a living in the pool. “With increased funding and advancements in recovery and training, we are seeing athletes stay in the sport later in life than they used to,” says Jacob Grosser, USA Swimming’s senior director of marketing and communications. 

The ability to focus solely on swimming without having to also balance the demands of another career has helped extend the range of ages at trials. According to data provided by USA Swimming, 5% of qualifiers for the 2024 trials are over the age of 26, even though most continue to fall within 17–23. 

Money doesn’t appear to play any role in the over-40-at-trials club.

Von der Lippe says that prior to 2008, she was exclusively a Masters swimmer. “I often surprised myself in meets by swimming faster than I expected, so I knew I could get close to the cut,” she says. “The trials that year were in Omaha, which is driving distance from Colorado, and my kids wanted to go with me to the alumni events and watch the meet. I thought it would be more fun to watch as a swimmer and have a deck pass, so I decided to go for it.” 

Von der Lippe’s children were still in grade school, and she didn’t have the time to train the way she once had. “I had to make my three weekly 4,000-yard workouts count,” she says. She supplemented her pool training with dryland circuits at home and at the women’s-only gym, Curves, where “most of the other members were in their 70s.” 

Making the most of shorter workouts is a refrain echoed by nearly all the over-40 qualifiers. Hunter says that new training techniques, including emerging research on recovery and injury prevention, have allowed older swimmers to stay more competitive for longer. In her run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, at which she won silver in the 50 freestyle, Torres famously substituted time in the water with strength and conditioning, including sessions with physical, massage, and stretch therapists. 

West believed his swimming days were finished after coming up short in the ’96 trials. He began working in the software industry and would soon start a family. But Irvine Novaquatics Coach Dave Salo talked him into swimming whenever his schedule would allow. “Dave was one of the only top coaches in the country who’d invite an adult nonprofessional swimmer to train with his senior group,” West says, referring to Salo’s USA Swimming program. Salo, who has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, had long been known as a proponent of shorter, higher-intensity workouts. Swimming just 3,000 yards a day allowed West to continue to train even as his career and family demanded more attention.

As West neared the end of his 30s, he began entering Masters meets with Novaquatics Masters and, to his surprise, posted times within striking distance of trials. In deciding to go for the cut, he doubled down on the speed-focused training he’d grown to believe in. 

“Swimmers often equate more yardage and short rest intervals with ‘better,’” he says. “In fact, shorter sets with more rest allow for more speed. If you want to swim fast in a meet, you have to swim fast in practice.” 

Speed work, West notes, requires varied sets focusing on different components of each stroke. “For breaststroke, that means pulling, dolphin kicking, sets with paddles and fins.” 
And along with weights, he began doing Pilates, which improved his body awareness, body position, and ankle control. He qualified in the 200 breaststroke at 39, a year out from the 2012 trials, then focused on the 100, which he bagged in April 2012 at the age of 40. Four years later, at 44, he missed qualifying for the 2016 trials by a heartbreaking tenth of a second. 

Braun had spent more than a decade away from the pool when a friend talked her into training for a triathlon. When she joined North Carolina Masters Swimming at 31, she quickly fell back in love with swimming—and, more important, with racing. A die-hard sprinter, she loves the adrenaline rush that comes with competition. 

“Racing, especially in the sprints, allows you to really get up to your full speed,” she says. “Meet speed is always faster than [practice speed].” 

Coming back to swimming as an adult allowed Braun to see the sport through a different lens. She enjoyed the social outlet of Masters workouts and meets, and loves that North Carolina Masters Swimming competes as a statewide club at out-of-state meets.

She qualified for trials in 2012 at 40 and came within a few tenths of making the meet in 2016. Now 51, Braun continues to concentrate on speed and power-focused training, including stroke technique, starts and turns, and sets with a power rack. She still competes at USA Swimming meets and says she’s still focused on getting better. 

“Goal setting is still important to me,” she says. “People think you can’t build muscle in your 50s, but you can. Training hard helps drive me to be my best, in my job and other areas of my life.” 
Nothing, however, lasts forever. Even the fittest athletes in the world, Hunter says, will see declines in their muscle mass, max heart rate, and aerobic capacities as they age. “We’re not likely to see a wave of Olympic trials qualifiers in their 50s,” she says. 

The declines, moreover, become more apparent in longer events, such as the 1500 or 400 IM. Just one swimmer within the over-40-at-trials club, Evans, qualified in an event longer than 200 meters. 

But given the right conditions—a fast pool, a cool night, a former champion who’s done the work—qualifying is still possible. Rose credits her success to her consistency and commitment to details.

“Working as hard as I could at every workout wasn’t sustainable and led to a lingering sickness,” she says. “Instead, I had to make a plan for specific things to target each day, whether that was speed, speed endurance [maintaining speed in longer races], or recovery, and then stick to it. Understanding how each day fit into the big picture gave me confidence, and I could see my progress as the weeks went by. Consistency and discipline have probably been the biggest gifts from this process.”

Rose will be about four months away from turning 47 at trials. She hasn’t yet decided on (or wasn’t willing to say out loud) her goals for the meet, but she says she wants to set the bar high enough to scare her.

“I’ve been so impressed by so many of the Masters swimmers I’ve met,” she says. “Especially those who come to the sport later in life. It takes so much courage to try something new. They’ve shown me that we have more in us than we think.

“We can do things we never thought possible.” 

In Their Own Words

‘I Was Experiencing a Few Nightmares of Actually Making the Team’

After a fun warm-up in the main competition pool involving a few bubble rings under the Jumbotron, I began my preparations for the start of the women’s 100 butterfly. I meandered out of the main pool arena, down behind the pulled curtain, past the athlete resting areas, around the other 50-meter pool, and into a secluded women’s restroom in the farthest reaches of the Omaha facility. This is where I planned to spend the next grueling 30 minutes squeezing into my suit. As a 40-plus-year-old mother of two, I didn’t want to gross out any of the younger competitors by having them witness this personal and embarrassing struggle.

Quite unlike the other three trials I’d competed in when I was younger, this time I was not preparing myself mentally for the challenge of achieving a coveted top-two spot to make the U.S. Olympic team. I was just happy to be there and planned to enjoy all the pageantry without the stress. Young competitors physically and mentally prepare with dreams of securing one of the 20-plus spots on the team. In contrast, I was experiencing a few nightmares of actually making the team. I had nothing to fear, however. I was seeded around 100th and would be swimming in the first heat of my event.

Trials is an exciting competition. Most of the fastest swimmers in the world attend but only a few get to represent the U.S. for medals at the Games. Wins are made by hundredths of a second. So many more fine athletes leave the trials disappointed than victorious. All should be proud of their lifelong achievements, which require vast amounts of physical and mental training. Enjoy the journey because swimming is life.

SUSAN VON DER LIPPE, COLORADO MASTERS SWIMMING

The ‘Old Guy’

I love everything about swimming. And I love feeling that way about swimming today.

I’ve been a competitive swimmer since I was an 8-and- under. I’m lucky that I’ve also been a surfer, body surfer, and open water swimmer my entire life. I love anything water, ocean, waves, or pool.

When I was 28, after the 2000 Olympic trials, my third, I decided to “retire.” I may have “retired” from competing in USA Swimming, but I never retired from aquatics.

In 2009, I came back to competitive swimming through USMS. I didn’t come back to try to compete in the Olympic trials or break records; I came back because I love training, swimming, being in shape, and hanging out with my swim friends.

By 2011, I had competed in several meets and decided to take a stab at the Masters world record in the 35–39 age group in the 200 LCM breaststroke. I missed breaking the record by 0.04 seconds, but I was surprised to learn that I had become the oldest American man to qualify for trials. Later that year I also qualified in the 100 breaststroke.

In my first few warm-up sessions at trials, the atmosphere was surreal. Here I am, a 40-year-old guy, the oldest male competitor, warming up with the best swimmers in the country. I was a parent to a 9-year-old and 7-year-old, I had a full-time job, and some of my former competitors were coaches at the meet; I did feel a little out of place. But in my mind, the pool is the same length and all that was really different was the venue.

One major difference about 2012 trials from my prior meets was having a ready room for prelims. When I arrived in the ready room for the 100 breaststroke, my fellow competitors all seemed nervous. I remember thinking to myself, “It’s just prelims and we’re in the first few heats—nothing to be nervous about really.” I was ready to go. They walked us out. I waved to my daughter, Summer, and son, Jake, who were in the stands. I finished second in my heat, dropping about eight-tenths from my qualifying time. A few days later, I competed in the 200 breaststroke and dropped seven- or eight-tenths from my qualifying time.

Trials was a success and great experience. I swam well, I reconnected with my former coaches Jon Urbanchek and Dave Salo, and I was able to meet some new competitors, some of whom were curious about who the “old guy” was—but that’s an entirely different story.

STEVE WEST, NOVAQUATICS MASTERS

Here to Compete

The highlight of my experience at Olympic trials in 2012 was the journey leading up to hitting the qualifying time, which was 26.39 in the 50 freestyle. My husband, Eric, and I traveled all over the U.S. to compete in USA Swimming long course meets chasing that 26.39. I finally hit 26.32 during a meet at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. It was even more special because I experienced that incredible moment with many of my teammates and family. 

What really blew me away was the excitement of so many people because of my age. The local media coverage made the moment feel even more special because it seemed to inspire others to not let age limit their goals. I received many messages and notes from people telling me how my journey to the Olympic trials as a 40-year-old was so inspiring. 

The Olympic trials was in Omaha, Nebraska. The venue was like no other I had ever competed in. The size of the crowds, the noise, and the excitement were exhilarating. The first time I made the Olympic trials was in 1988 at the University of Texas pool. They say everything is bigger in Texas, but not in this case! 

One of my most vivid memories was when I first arrived at the arena to register and get my credentials. Two young women with credentials hanging around their necks walked by, so I asked them for directions to registration. They were quick to inform me that only swimmers needed to register and grab credentials, with the clear implication that I could not possibly be there to compete. I happened to be walking with [fellow North Carolina Masters Swimming member] Hill Carrow, who heard the exchange. With a bemused look on his face, Hill politely let them know that I was there to compete too. 

I’ll never forget warming up in a lane with Ryan Lochte. Or snapping a picture with Dara Torres, who was making a go at another Olympics at 45. But the best part was experiencing it all with my husband, parents, in-laws, niece, nephew, and my boss and her husband.

ERIKA BRAUN, NORTH CAROLINA MASTERS SWIMMING