Missy Franklin’s longtime coach with the Colorado Stars, Todd Schmitz, will share insight behind the scenes from Team Missy during the Olympic Trials this week and at the Rio Olympics in collaboration with Denver Post Olympics writer John Meyer.
OMAHA— At a big meet like this, you plan a little extra time for things because there are a lot of unknowns that happen. Sure enough, our flight out of Denver on Friday was delayed a little over 2½ hours, so that heightened the anxiety a little bit for all of us. Even though we were on a direct connection out of Denver, the plane wasn’t in Denver, so there was nothing we could do but wait. The good thing was, we were waiting at home, not sitting in the airport.
We finally got here Friday afternoon. Missy swam and relaxed a little bit. Saturday morning she had her news conference to start the day. Then we swam in the warm-up pool and again in the competition pool in the afternoon. We had a really nice dinner Saturday night — her parents, her publicist Karen Linhart, her trainer Loren Landow and his wife Michelle, who is Missy’s physical therapist. We just enjoyed each other’s company a little bit.
Sunday, because she didn’t compete on Day One of the trials, we came over to the arena a little bit early because then the meet started at 10 a.m. She swam in the competition pool before it got crazy busy and then relaxed the rest of the day.
Missy begins her trials Monday morning in heats of the 100-meter backstroke, with semifinals following Monday night. She will race probably sometime between 9:20 and 9:40 Monday morning (Denver time), and I think all parties involved are ready for that first race so we can all take a deep breath and get this thing rolling.
The 100 back is one of her favorite events, although the 200 back is her baby because she still holds that world record and she won the Olympic gold medal. She won the gold medal in the 100 back too.
The excitement here is awesome, but there’s that nervous tightness. My job is to try to soothe those nerves a little bit.
