By Braden Keith on SwimSwam
Alex Walsh, a rising sophomore at the University of Virginia, held a press conference last week in her hometown of Nashville in conjunction with the Nashville Aquatic Club that she trained at as an age grouper.
The interviews came after Walsh, a member of the USA Swimming National Team, qualified for her first Olympic Team after winning the 200 IM in Omaha.
She swam a new best time of 2:08.87 in the semi-finals that makes her the 19th-best performer in history. She wound up swimming slower, 2:09.30, in the final to win by .02 seconds, with just .04 seconds separating her from the third-place finisher Madisyn Cox – the narrowest Olympic Trials margin in the history of the event.
While the moment was the biggest success of her career so far, Walsh says that she was still learning throughout the meet.
“This last week has been really emotional, with the highs and lows of ‘I just made the team’ and then my sister didn’t make the team and that was really hard to deal with,” Walsh said.
Her younger sister, Gretchen Walsh, finished 12th in the semi-finals of the women’s 100 fly before bouncing back for a 7th-place finish in the 50 free later in the meet.
“But then also I’ve seen other swimmers who were…going in they had such high expectations; they didn’t meet those expectations, but then they came back at the end of the meet,” Alex Walsh continued. “Like Simone Manuel, for example. She just missed making the semi-final (in the 100 free) and then made the Olympics in the 50. And even my sister, who didn’t do as well. and then she made the final in the 50. I want to kind of take that and if I don’t perform as well as I wanted to, still give myself an opportunity to be better and do something good.”
“I think seeing people coming back from failures in such a short turnaround like that has really honestly inspired me and showed me that one performance doesn’t just impact everything, so I want to take that lesson and bring it to Tokyo.”
Alex Walsh also reflected on a moment where her father, Robert Walsh, helped her refocus before the semifinals.
“I was really nervous for semi-finals, honestly more than I was for the finals, and I remember I was in my room and I was really upset and my dad came in.
“He was like ‘this is your race, you do this all the time, you’re so good at this, just go out there and just leave it in the pool. It’s only semis, all you have to do is final.’
“So that made me feel a lot more confident and obviously yeah I just wanted to put myself in a good position for the final and so I think getting the best time, I was really happy with that, and then putting myself as the top seed made my confidence go up a lot and really my approach going into the finals was like, I just have to go fast from the get-go and just leave it in the pool. And I think I did that. It hurt really badly at the end.”
Watch the full interview with Alex Walsh and her parents below:
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Alex Walsh on the Lessons She Learned in Omaha and Hopes to Take to Tokyo