As we move into the 2nd quarter of our 2011 recap, the big news swirled around the buildup to the 2011 World Championships, including some big World Championship Trials swims around the world. And though the collegiate season had already wrapped up, there was still a ton of swirling and coaching fallout from Arizona coach Frank Busch’s decision to become the USA Swimming National Team Director.

April 2011

• April kicked off with some Fantasy Swimming news, as we ran our Sponsor ‘Ship series that compared Speedo-sponsored athletes to Arena-sponsored athletes. Check out who won.
• South African Olympic finalist Suzaan van Biljon announced her comeback in early April, and fought all the way back to a 1:09.64 at the World Championships. We haven’t seen much of her in the latter part of this year (so much that we totally forgot about her when we graded the comebacks), but don’t sleep on her. She’s still young enough to make the drops she needs in order to inflict some damage at the Olympics.
• The Japanese National Championships in April were extremely fast, capped off by Naoya Tomita’s landmark win over Kosuke Kitajima in the 200 breaststroke in 2:08.25. Not only did that mark by the 21-year old top a national hero, it is and was the fastest time ever swum in textile. There were a grand total of 6 National Records broken at the meet.
• On April 11th, former Wisconsin coach Eric Hansen was announced as the new coach at the University of Arizona, taking over for the legendary Frank Busch, who was leaving to become the new USA Swimming National Team Director. In May, Wisconsin would hire Hansen’s replacement in the form of former Arizona coach Whitney Hite. So far, both coaches have thrived in their new environments – Hansen and the Wildcats swam incredibly well at the Texas Invitational; Hite’s got the Wisconsin women firing on all cylinders and has very strong recruiting classes coming in next fall on both the men’s and women’s sides.
• In April, USA Swimming released their Open Water Safety report, including new rules that would govern the sport under their jurisdiction. There were some shots taken at their FINA counterparts across-the-pond, which got a bit heated in both directions, and shortly thereafter FINA would release their own detailed report about the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Fran Crippen.
• Shortly after the reports, FINA decided that the open water swimming in Shanghai at the World Championships would continue as planned, though many athletes ultimately would pull out of the longest 25km race at that event because the water was too warm for safety. USA Swimming would take a different tact, and move their Open Water National Championships/Worlds qualifying from Ft. Myers, around the coast to Ft. Lauderdale. As a further result of the report, FINA would cancel the 2nd leg of its World Cup Series due to poor water quality.
• Kara Lynn Joyce reversed the “great swim migration” when she went to train with Missy Franklin, Todd Schmitz, and the Colorado Stars in Denver. Along those same lines, another great breaststroker, Mike Alexandrov, went to train with Dave Salo and the Trojans at USC. April was a month to move, as Dagny Knutson left Fullerton to train with Gregg Troy at Florida.
• USA Swimming announced a partnership with Praesidium, a nationally-recognized child protection group, to manage their sexual abuse training program. Chris Desantis of The Swim Brief would give praise to the training videos later in the year, when they were first released to the coaching community.
• On April 22nd, Cal’s Liz Pelton got a very early start on the 2011-2012 recruiting season when she announced that she was committing to defending National Champs Cal. She was probably the top recruit in an awesome nation-wide class, and decided to make her commitment early so that she could focus on her 2012 Olympic training.
• On the final day of April, American swimmer Jessica Hardy got great news that the IOC had cleared her to compete at the London Olympics, in choosing to waive “Rule 45″ because her positive test at the 2008 Olympic Trials happened so shortly after the rule was enacted. The rule would later be struck down by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, though the British Olympic Committee is still fighting that decision.