Caeleb Dressel returns after depression

Old Gregg Troy described it with his proverbial Puritan laconicism: "They pushed him so hard and he pushed himself so hard that he broke."

This Saturday morning, Caeleb Dressel, the fastest bare-chested swimmer in history, the man who has covered the distances of 50 and 100 meters at the fastest speed without wearing a polyurethane swimsuit, will jump into the Duna Arena pool from Budapest after overcoming the worst of his depressions.

Victim of a perfectionist and cruel mind, he harassed himself even after winning five Olympic golds at the Tokyo Games, something that only Michael Phelps and Mark Spitz had achieved, the most inaccessible myths of their sport.

"The monumental moment in a swimmer's life is the Olympic Games, an event that occurs every four years and in which my longest event lasts 49 seconds," Dressel said, explaining the kind of void he plunged into. after its apotheosis in Tokyo, a year ago.

“I felt so lost!

I wanted to leave the water forever but I knew that the water was one of my places of safety.

He was between a rock and a hard place.

I felt miserably bad for a couple of months."

The 25-year-old Florida boy confessed to journalist Graham Bensinger that what tormented him most was not having been able to break his best records in the 50 and 100-meter freestyle, despite having won the tests.

“It wasn't fair to myself,” he said.

"Absolutely.

He had just won five gold medals on the biggest stage and all he thought was that he should have swum faster.”

Panic attacks

Until Christmas 2021, the most successful athlete of the United States team prostrated himself in his room without wanting anything.

A well he'd known since his senior year in high school when he started having panic attacks and blues.

Christina, his mother, confessed it on American television like someone practicing catharsis: “He would lock himself in his room with the blinds down and refuse to eat.

He didn't want to surround himself with people.

He was in a deep depression."

This time it was no different.

She slowly got over it through psychologists, gyms and swimming pools.

“At the end of January I found myself lifting weights that I had never lifted in my life,” he said;

"And I already felt fit again."

Seeking fresh sensations, Dressel left Gregg Troy to join the group of Anthony Nesty, a former Olympic butterfly runner and head coach at the University of Florida in Jacksonville.

Under the guidance of Nesty, responsible for the preparation of Bobby Finke and Kieran Smith, American swimming recovered in Tokyo the ground lost for years in endurance events and formed a pole of attraction on the hot Atlantic coast.

Not only Dressel felt the call of the shoal.

Katie Ledecky, who graduated from her college at Stanford, crossed the continent to Jacksonville as a professional swimmer and assistant to Nesty on the university's coaching roster.

In Budapest there will be neither Emma McKeon, winner of seven medals in Tokyo, nor Ariarne Titmus, world record holder in the 400 free, the best swimmers of the last Games.

Both have preferred to accommodate their preparation for the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham in July.

This clears the way for Ledecky, who at 25 years old has accumulated so much experience that she has taken on the face of a Secretary of State.

Her challenge has much of a propaganda campaign in these warlike times.

If she wins a fifth consecutive 800m freestyle world title, the notes of

will take on a particular resonance when played alongside Orbán's Danube, on Putin's spectrum of influence.

Kristif Milak, the challenger

Ledecky, like local heroine Katinka Hosszu in the medley events, dreams of joining the list of swimmers who have won five consecutive world championships in one discipline.

So far only three have made it: Grant Hackett in the 1,500m, Ryan Lochte in the 200m IM, and Sun Yang in the 400m free.

The pantheon of the most persistent and reliable still does not embrace Dressel, so many times paralyzed in his adolescence by episodes of emotional disturbance.

The Duna Arena cannot be a more propitious venue.

In its waters, during the 2017 World Cup, Dressel became the fastest man in the world.

There he set the American record in the 100 free and there he became the first to become world champion three times in one day: 100 butterfly, 50 free and 4x100 relay.

Five years ago in Budapest, Dressel equaled Phelps' record of seven world championships golds in 2007. His return to the place that saw him take off completes a brilliant circle.

Repeating the four individual golds in the 50 and 100 free and in the 50 and 100 butterfly, as he did in 2017, 2019 and 2021, seems an easier task than in Tokyo.

The resignation of Kyle Chalmers, the Australian sprinter, places him before a single challenger at the height of his prestige.

Kristof Milak, the Hungarian king of the butterfly, 200m world record holder, promises the tightest race on the program: the 100m final, scheduled for Friday 24th.

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