Follow our Olympic Games coverage in the run-up to the Paris Games.
The shine of Caeleb Dressel’s seven gold medals may suggest otherwise, but he knows swimming can be a brutal and suffocating sport.
He is without a doubt one of the best in the world at what he does: sprinting from one side of the pool to the other (and sometimes back). He holds the world record in the men’s 100m butterfly, having first snatched that historic distinction from Michael Phelps in 2019. Dressel then lowered his world record in the event at the Tokyo Olympics – where he won five gold medals in five events. .
Despite everything, Dressel felt miserable.
He was fixated on where he felt he had failed. In one race it was the turn. Another: the finish. His main position. It didn’t matter that he had touched the wall first, time and time again. It didn’t matter that he took home gold and helped Team USA finish atop the medal list. He strove for perfection. He chased times and chased stretch goals. He had not met them.
“I created a monster within myself — so caught up in perfectionism,” he told former Olympians Missy Franklin and Katie Hoff on their “Unfiltered Waters” podcast. “So caught up in, ‘If I don’t see these times, it means I’m a bad person, or I haven’t trained hard enough. If I don’t get a world record, that means… I wasn’t obsessed enough.’”
The sport he was drawn to as a child because it was so wonderfully fun was the exact opposite. And it had been that way for years. But Dressel kept pushing himself and listened to his internal critic tear himself apart.
Until he ‘broke’, he says it now. He abruptly withdrew halfway through the 2022 World Championships competition in Budapest and disappeared from the sport for eight months.
Dressel hasn’t gone into much detail about that period of his life in Gainesville, Florida, other than to say he spent a lot of time with his therapist. His wife, Meghan, was also there for him, although she also realized that Dressel had to have a lot of conversations in his own mind. Some days he didn’t do much. Most days he avoided routes that took him past the University of Florida pool. He didn’t want to smell the chlorine.
He had to figure out who he was after his best times and what drove him beyond the pool. He had to reorient himself, how he believed others thought about him and why they loved him. He had to learn to laugh again.
The process was not easy and progress was not always in a straight line. But it’s what makes Dressel, 27, who he is today as a swimmer and as a person (and new father). It’s also why he’s back in the pool heading to Paris, one of Team USA’s headliners and perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle for the U.S. Swim Team in its efforts to win the meet by bringing home more gold medals to take home than his colleagues. . There is outside pressure, yes. But in his mind, Dressel’s biggest critic is quieter.
“It’s really tough,” Dressel said The Athletics last month. “It’s ingrained in me – where you always want to look for ways to get better. I still do that, but I don’t get obsessed with it and so fixated on it that I lose sight of what’s actually fun about the sport. It’s hard, and it’s not like I suddenly discovered it this year. There are things I’m really proud of that I’ve done differently, like being able to enjoy parts of the sport without just berating myself for not being perfect.
“It’s still a work in progress.”
Caeleb Dressel won five gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics. But a year later he left the sport. It’s still “a work in progress,” he said of his return. (Tim Clayton/Corbis via Getty Images)
Dressel sounds like someone who has discovered a lot about himself through therapy. One of the first things he will tell you is how helpful his regular appointments with his therapist have been.
“I’ve tried not to be so fixated on results and just enjoy racing and training – those are the two parts of the sport that I really enjoy,” Dressel said. “There are parts of the sport that I really don’t like, that I really hate. But it’s worth putting up with the moments I really enjoy. It will be a balance; I don’t expect every part of the sport to be the best ever for me. But I really focused on the parts of the sport that I enjoy.
“That has been the biggest difference for me. I have always enjoyed training. I have always enjoyed being with the team. I really enjoy the actual racing part. Once the gun goes off, it’s just plain fun. So I tried to just let it swim. Just swimming this year.”
Dressel will simply swim the 50m freestyle and 100 fly as individual events at the Games, and he will likely be part of several relays. At the U.S. Olympic Trials in Indianapolis, he finished third in the final of the 100 free, costing him the chance to defend his gold medal at the Paris event.
But he is happy to be part of the Olympic team. He is proud of what he accomplished during the trials to qualify. He is very happy that his son August was allowed to see everything, in Meghan’s arms in the stands.
“No one can take that away,” Dressel said in Indianapolis. ‘He won’t remember. I’ll tell him, believe me, I have pictures so I can prove it. … That was a very special moment. Meghan knows what this entails, not just the parenting side, but she also sees first-hand the challenges that come with the sport.
“The tears that come with that, the frustration and then also the highlights, and being able to share that with them, because they experience that too – that was very special, August got to see that.”
Meghan shared a video of Dressel with baby August at the Olympic training camp in North Carolina this month, another moment captured and preserved to commemorate a unique moment. They will also be in Paris, along with Dressel’s parents and family. Dressel said he wouldn’t be where he is today without their support. And he certainly wouldn’t be where he is without Meghan, who he calls the “superhero” of their family.
Parenting is great for many reasons, but perhaps the greatest lesson it teaches is one of perspective – especially for someone who has spent most of their life chasing times and looking for perfection that doesn’t exist and can’t. to exist.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever have a best time again, and that’s difficult to say out loud. That is really true,” said Dressel. “When you’re 19, 20, 21, you just keep chipping, chipping, chipping. I’m still working harder than ever and finding every path I can take to shave those few tenths. But I do not know. I don’t know if I can do that. I’m very good at racing. If you put me in a race, I’ll get close, as close as I can, even if I have to try to kill myself to get there. I will put myself in those situations.”
So he doesn’t know exactly how Paris will go. But he knows he is older, wiser and genuinely happier than he was before the last Olympics. Others see it too, and not just when he walks around the track after a race or hits the water in celebration.
“He always had that smile,” said seven-time gold medalist and University of Florida training partner Katie Ledecky. “He took that time away, and when he came back, he had that smile every day. Just to see his progress over the last year, how he’s gotten better and better every meet. He just seems to love the racing, and he probably loves the training more than the racing, and that makes everyone around him better.
It will also make one of the best swimmers in the world better. And that’s why that smile is as good as gold, no matter what medal hangs around Dressel’s neck.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever have a best time again, and that’s hard to say out loud,” said Caeleb Dressel. He will try it in Paris later this month. (Maddie Meyer/Getty Images)
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletics; photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
